What’s Your Facility’s Emergency Plan? (Safety Tales Podcast S3 Episode 8)

Intro Speaker:

Dave & Bacon's Safety Tales. The only industrial safety podcast that brings you common sense advice on job site safety, standards, regulations, and industry best practices without putting you to sleep.

Fred Radunzel:

Hi! Hey! Let's get going here. Guys, welcome to another episode of Dave & Bacon's Safety Tales. It's a hot one. We're right here in the middle of summer getting recorded. You're playing golf tomorrow? I played over the weekend.

Dave White:

Yeah. It's going to be awful. There's not enough powder and changes of shirts to make that even worth it. I was just looking at ... We got these smart thermostats or whatever, so I'm sitting there and I get the difference in usage was. Our consumption in June downstairs was only up 10%, but guess what our consumption upstairs was?

Fred Radunzel:

Up 30?

Dave White:

40.

Fred Radunzel:

40.

Dave White:

40%. It's awful. Awfully hot.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, I played golf over the weekend. It was actually pretty nice, a little breezy day, but we were done before noon, so it's not too bad, but you were talking about going out about noon tomorrow, right?

Dave White:

Yeah. It's like right before lunch shotgun.

Fred Radunzel:

A couple of beers in there. Hydrate yourself nicely.

Dave White:

Where I'll probably have a couple of adult beverages, a couple of Gatorades, and not pee until like Saturday afternoon or something.

Fred Radunzel:

Pee and you'll be looking like you're peeing Bud heavy.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

Hey, everyone, Fred and Dave here. Quad City Safety. Please reach out to us if you have any questions or concerns or have any comments about the podcast. Reach out to us on social media.

We're here to help. You don't have to just listen to the podcast and be like, "Well, I got a good question about what they're talking about. Let me swallow that and I'll take it to bed with myself tonight." Ask. Ask and we'll help you out.

Dave White:

Yeah, we've gotten some recent feedback, so we love hearing that people are listening to us.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Sometimes, without a lot of feedback, you don't know that anybody cares and while it doesn't take us a lot of time, we do put some time and effort into making sure that we're coming up with stuff that's relevant stuff that maybe you don't think of often. That's one of the things that will be ... Our topic of the day is something ...

It's probably not something that people have a written plan on, but it's one that you need to shake the dust off and look at it from time-to-time.

Fred Radunzel:

Yep. We're talking emergencies today. Emergencies. When was the last time you made a trip to the emergency room?

Dave White:

I was in the emergency room three times last year before they finally admitted me. I mean, you learn a lot. Like, certain codes are for, we have a gunshot wound coming in. You just kind of watch it and you're like, "I wonder what one is?", because everyone is freaking out.

No, the last time I was in, right before I was admitted to the hospital, right before the 4th of July. So, if you can imagine, 4th of July. You've got people that are missing fingers from fireworks and some good 187's. Drive-bys. You've got kids shot up and everything. Emergency room is a horrible place to be.

Fred Radunzel:

I'm only there late at night, it seems like. I have like a couple of little ones. I've been there with super high fevers. The last time I was in an emergency room for myself would have been like 20 years ago when I was playing baseball and I ran into a fence. Top of the fence went through my face, so it tore me up pretty good.

Dave White:

I had one with Maverick like that one time where he was on his bike and planted and somehow the handlebars like hit him and made a perfect laceration. Me, I'm sitting there going, stitches or no stitches. Finally, I'm like, that's big enough we should probably go.

Fred Radunzel:

It's on his face.

Dave White:

Yeah. We went to the old ER and sat there for a while. We were sitting in the lobby five hours later. Finally, I just said, "Let's go get some skin glue and some ..."

Fred Radunzel:

You left? After five hours?

Dave White:

Yep. Left and went home and you can't really see the scar, so I did pretty good.

Fred Radunzel:

I would have said, "Five hours, you're pot committed.

Dave White:

What's that?

Fred Radunzel:

You're pot committed at five hours.

Dave White:

Well, the whole time, I'm just trying to keep the wound wet, you know what I'm saying? So, it doesn't start ... So, they don't have to scrape it out or anything. Cause more pain to get it going.

Fred Radunzel:

Well, let's talk a little bit about facility emergencies or having an emergency plan in place.

Dave White:

Basically, I think the goal of that was to say, "It's a real crappy place to end up so we'll try to precursor how to not get there."

Fred Radunzel:

Not get in the emergency room facility-wise.

Dave White:

Yeah, and high deductibles and all that stuff.

Fred Radunzel:

I guess you started about what constitutes an emergency that could happen in a facility. So, weather would be like the first one.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

Like, a weather-related issue.

Dave White:

When we talk about emergencies again, how to say? It's anything that's going to threaten the security, life, health, of an employee. So, a lot of times when we sit there and we go, emergency plan, it can be your tornado. It can be an earthquake. It can be flooding, but we also have a new world that we live in, so it could be an active shooter.

Fred Radunzel:

Fire.

Dave White:

Could be a fire. It could be a cardiac instance, a first-aid instance. A fall.

Fred Radunzel:

A chemical something, break-out type of thing.

Dave White:

A lot of facilities that have the bigger hazards a lot of time, have done a good job of going in there because they've got to know from a spill standpoint, what's going to happen. A lot of the times, this is not really geared at you, the bigger facilities, because a lot of times, they'll have that in place.

I think it's more geared towards the smaller facilities that have them and realistically again, this is not an end all, meaning, we're not going to give you the recipe to get everything taken care of, but just wanted to sit there and kind of have a conversation of what kind of things that we need to talk about.

As we start talking about that, that's where we start this disaster plan is to identify what can happen and when that happens, what we do, where we go, and what we might need to work in the middle of it. Then, what the end game looks like. Finally, how we account for people and make sure that everybody ... It's always good when you come back, and you hear ...

When we were kids, they'd always say, "Sound off." We would be in a line and we'd go, "One, two, three, four," so everybody would count down. Whoever was with us would know, I have 20 kids. "Sound off." You'd always get to like 11. Then, no 12. Then, you're like, "Okay, we have a problem."

Fred Radunzel:

We're missing 12.

Dave White:

We're missing 12, whoever 12 is. Making sure that we don't leave somebody behind. It would suck to have a fire and all of a sudden, we go to do a head count and think we got everybody.

Fred Radunzel:

I think that's also a lot of times why sometimes it seems corny in different places. I know we go into facilities and they make you sign in on a visitor log so that way they know everyone that's in the building in case shit goes down, everyone's accounted for. This person is in. We have all our people but where is Fred? Where's Fred at?

Dave White:

Fred may be ...

Fred Radunzel:

He doesn't know our plan.

Dave White:

Hunkered down in a bathroom somewhere. He comes out and, "Where'd everybody go?"

Fred Radunzel:

I had a [inaudible 00:08:53] a little bit ago. Mexican food got me and what's happening? It's smoky.

Dave White:

I have no idea what to do now. That's a lot of times also I know whether it's contractors or even people like us, sometimes it'll be like, "Hey, can you just sit down and watch this 20-second safety video?" A lot of times, it's like, "We have really nasty caustic chemicals and shit. If you run out of the building, look to the wind sock and run away from that."

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Good enough. Good to know.

Fred Radunzel:

Fair enough. I guess, in a lot of cases when we're talking here, we can get into having that plan in effect and probably a written plan and train the plan.

Dave White:

Yeah. You have to figure out what you might need, meaning obviously, I don't think the day that we have a hurricane in Iowa, I think it's the end of the world. We should just check everything.

Fred Radunzel:

End of day?

Dave White:

Yeah, that's it. King Kong will be climbing the ...

Fred Radunzel:

Sharknado? [crosstalk 00:10:03]

Dave White:

The Sharknado will have happened, and it will all be over at that point.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

It's figuring out what you have or more of a propensity. So, certain areas have a higher propensity to earthquakes. Some might have a higher risk of flooding. Flooding, and sometimes these disasters or emergencies, or one or the other, so the timeliness.

A lot of times, not too often, do you have a flood that just literally pops up like in an hour. I mean, yeah, there can be stuff like that, but that's usually the guy that looks at the water and goes, "I think I get across that," only to find out that, "Oh, that water's six feet deep."

Fred Radunzel:

A family member, recently in Des Moines, when they had all the flooding out there. She got, her and her boyfriend, got stuck in the water. They were driving to the point where they got out and were sitting on top of the car and had to come get rescued because they drove in.

They were younger kids, so probably didn't know exactly what they were looking at. You're like, "Ah, you can make it through." Then, all of a sudden, water starts coming in your car. You're like, "Aww, shit. The boat's got a leak."

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

So, they got out and got out of the car, but they got rescued, but then, of course, it's every Tom, Dick, and Harry out there. It's like, "Well, these idiots. What are they doing?" It's like, you don't know what you don't know.

Dave White:

Yeah. No doubt about it. Most of this stuff is going to be, we should understand that it's going to happen. Let's say, from a fire standpoint. Part of your emergency plan should probably be, do we have smoke detectors? Have we checked the batteries? Do we have a system? Have we checked that system?

A lot of locales will kind of regulate that, meaning ... I know here, the Davenport Fire Department does a good job of staying on top of us to come in and go ... Sometimes, we're not always as good at doing inspections as we should, but they kind of come around and go, "Has this been done?" Or, serve letters, or whatever.

Some of it, as it depends on what you're looking at, there's going to be some housekeeping items that you have to do, but there's also the okay, when this catches on fire, what do we do? Where are we going to go?

Identifying those earlier than later is kind of a big deal. Active shooter one seems like about three days a week. There's something on the news about an active shooter, so this is probably not something that's going to go away. Probably will continue, but it's training people on how to deal with those situations.

Like, a lot of schools are already doing that. Again, this is, from an emergency standpoint, it's something that's got a high risk. It happens really quick, so you have to respond. You have to respond timely.

A lot of times if there's codes that go out. So, it identifies that this is going on. Then, there's protocols. I'm going into schools right now. A lot of times, the protocols for schools will be to barricade.

They've made a lot of little widgets now that can keep an active shooter from entering every classroom, kind of channeling it off. It can be staging, identifying, we're in a high risk area. Okay? Well, maybe we need somebody there to deal with it on site instead of respond to it.

There's a lot of things that people have to work through to get that plan. Again, like we gave a precursor, the goal here is not to tell you how to create a plan. It's just to kind of warm your brain up to let's think about this. What do we have and if this happens, what are we going to do?

Fred Radunzel:

The next thing I had down was, it looks like packing like a kit to have ready for some different hazards. Certain emergencies.

Dave White:

Well, when we talk about kits, it can be ... Let's say it's a tornado. Tornado warnings can go on for a period of time. Bad weather, whatever it is. You may have to hunker down. You should really have these not just at work. You should have something like this at home so that when all of a sudden, it's what is that? It's not noon in bluegrass. That's an alarm.

Fred Radunzel:

It's not the first Tuesday of the month.

Dave White:

Yeah. We know, wait a second. It is 1:00 in the morning and that thing's blaring, which means that somebody, somewhere has enough of a level of give a shit to say, "Y'all be aware that something bad's coming through." At that point in time, you should respond to it.

You should respond to it if you're in your office or you should respond to it even if you're at home. What do some of us do? Some of us grab our cell phones, go outside and start looking around, trying to see if we can't be the next guy that gets featured on the 6:00 news for the weather spotter of the month or whatever.

Fred Radunzel:

Have you been in a tornado like where it was on you?

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

When I was a kid, we had a tornado back-to-back years on the same day. The same day, back-to-back years. Yep. The first one, it was in Parkview, and the first one, I remember, just being in the living room, hanging out, tornado warnings. We're watching the news and then, my dad's like looking at the back window.

Probably, I don't know, maybe a football field from our house, a garage just goes psst. Gone. Garage is just gone. He goes, "Fred, I think it's time to get down to the basement."

So, we run down to the basement and what the tornado did was wiped out that garage, picked up some trees, threw those around, bounced in our backyard, bounced over the house, hit another building on the other side of our house, smoked it completely, and then just took off on its way.

Somehow, it bounced in our yard. You could see where the grass was all torn up. Blew over. But, then I do remember on the news, the person that had that garage, bad to say, now it's 20 years ago.

Anyways, they had like a beer can collection in that garage of this old different beer cans and stuff like that. So, the garage gets laid out. Beer cans are everywhere and they're on the news, crying about their beer can collection. That ended up happening. Scary ...

Fred Radunzel:

Hear about their beer can collection.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

That ended up happening, so. Scary shit when it all goes down.

Dave White:

Old beer cans are actually worth a lot of money.

Fred Radunzel:

Really?

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

Drank ones?

Dave White:

Well, what they would do is, you see them, they'll poke a hole in the bottom and drink it from the bottom, so the can stays intact.

Fred Radunzel:

An empty beer can is worth money?

Dave White:

My-

Fred Radunzel:

Like a Wheaties box?

Dave White:

My ex-father in law bought his house with his beer can collection. He sold his beer can collection and had enough.

Fred Radunzel:

Aw, man!

Dave White:

It's like baseball cards.

Fred Radunzel:

It is?

Dave White:

It's all ... We're having this conversation when their Bitcoin.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. We went through Beanie Babies.

Dave White:

Well, at least a Beanie Baby, you have-

Fred Radunzel:

Tangible.

Dave White:

Something to hold. I mean how you sit there and you go, "Well this Beanie Baby is worth $50 and this one ..."

Fred Radunzel:

This one with the Grateful Dead logo embroidered on it.

Dave White:

Yeah, verses not.

Fred Radunzel:

Alright, we're getting way off.

Dave White:

Back into knowing what that plan is, well what are planning for? That we talked about. Are we talking about, again, active shooter, tornadoes, flooding, earthquakes? Maybe it's a first-aid, maybe it's related to first-aid CPR. Again, understanding what we're working the plan for. Then, what is the que for everybody? How do you shoot the firing ... Everything has to have a start.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

So, at some point in time, like when your dad looked at you and said, "Fred, I think it's time for us to get to the basement."

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

So, we need to have that button. Whatever we page or however we do that. Again, that can be smoke detectors, smoke alarms or whatever.

Fred Radunzel:

Yep.

Dave White:

Then, in that plan, in a lot of cases, it's going to be, "We need to get to somewhere. We need to get out of where we're at or we need to get to a place in where we're at."

Fred Radunzel:

Yep. That leads to me to the next topic. Visual ques, or signage, basically.

Dave White:

Let's use, Fred has a real bad Mexican meal and is on site somewhere, and he comes out and he's watched the safety video and it says, "If this happens, you need to go here."

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Well, in all cases, there's a chance that he's left there and goes, "I don't know where the yellow brick road is." So, having some stuff mapped out, or a way to get somewhere, is pretty important. Especially for tornadoes and things like that that happen pretty quick. If you get to a place that's marked a tornado shelter, unless somebody is really filled at scoping the fact, that it's away from windows, that it's preferably below grade, all the good stuff to pick, you're probably going to be okay if you get there.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

It may take a day or two for them to dig you out, but then that plays to having that bag that, "Man, now we're trapped under the stairs. We're alive, the house is not above us, or the building is gone above us, but we're sitting here."

Fred Radunzel:

You've got these kids stuck in the mine.

Dave White:

Absolutely.

I've been on some calls where we've talked to coal miners, underground coal miners, and they have rooms set up for that. So, if something happens, they literally have everything that they need for 20 something ... They have lighting ready. They have food ready, water ready.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Granted, that's a real extreme situation. I guess where I'm trying to put that is, a lot of times, yeah there's an extreme consequence and a high probability of that. We shouldn't treat everything like, "Well, we haven't had a tornado go through here in 20 years." If that's your statement to not do it, you might want to at least try to rethink that because it's not 1980 anymore. We're a little bit ahead of, how to say, a lot of times the goal and safety is to get to where we have the role of zero, or get to where we don't injure anybody or we don't kill anybody. To get there, you've got to look any everything. You can't leave any stone unturned.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. One thing I know you've brought up in the past to me was someone like the lit stuff. So, the power goes out, people can't really see where they're going. So, there's the technology advance, where there's glow in the dark signage.

Dave White:

Yeah, you have photo luminescent tapes.

Fred Radunzel:

Things on the floor that will tell you where to go to follow to get to your shelter. Then, it's labeled in the tape or whatever, so that when shit goes down and I come running out of the bathroom, I can see on the floor.

Dave White:

They'll have little decals. It'll be tornado squiggles.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

I think, on the visual ques is what you were referring to it as.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Yeah, there's all kinds of stuff that you can have visual ques. Visual ques can be, again, marking where your fire extinguishers are, marking emergency exits.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Marking, "Don't go here" because you always hear the people trying to get out and a lot of buildings sometimes may have rooms that's like, "Don't go. There's no way to get out of there from here."

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

It's like, "This is not an exit." It's on about every interstate, if you look at them backwards, like on the on ramps and everything. If you're going the wrong way and you look at it, "Don't enter here. This is not where ... Don't go here."

So, again, visual ques, whether, "Negative. Don't do it" or mapping out how you get it. Accuform has sign maps where you print, "You're here. You need to go here."

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

You can run up that. It's photo luminescent, so you can see it in the dark and you've got a good idea of, "Hopefully, I know where I'm going."

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. If you haven't seen some of that stuff, please reach out to us. We'll get you the information that you need.

Dave White:

And again, this whole plan-

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

To prepare it and to send it out in an email and make everybody aware of, we're not spending a lot of money.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

I think, a lot of times-

Fred Radunzel:

Once a year, do a little training thing on it for 15 minutes.

Dave White:

Every year that I rode a school bus, they would pull up one day and they would go, "Okay, we've got to figure out how to get out of the school bus."

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

They would go over this half. "If we can go out this door, we're going to go out. Then, the two people in the back are going to jump out and help everybody." Then, we had the Carrollton bus crash where we killed a bunch of people in Kentucky in a school bus.

Fred Radunzel:

Good grief.

Dave White:

Then, they made it to where, "Well, maybe we should have some of these windows that can open" because it was incapacitated to get out of the emergency exits.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

I forget how many people died, but it was-

Fred Radunzel:

No bueno.

Dave White:

It was like 30 kids.

Fred Radunzel:

Jesus.

So, back to the disaster preparedness kit that you have. You get water, food, first-aid kits, AD. Somebody goes down, whether it's your weather radio, maybe a whistle, your fire extinguisher. Then, you have lighting, flashlights.

Dave White:

Yeah, emergency lighting.

Fred Radunzel:

All of that type of stuff. You have all of that stuff ready to go.

Dave White:

We have more and more customers that are paying attention to when we sit there and talk about emergency disaster planning that its, "I'm like this guy that's working in North Dakota on a wind farm and, what do I do if I get stuck?"

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

So, they'll have that emergency kit that's got a little bit of food. It's got a little bit of ... Usually they'll have a candle. They'll have enough stuff in there that ... This is bad. We're hunkering down because we may lose you for a day or two before we can get something in there to come retrieve you. Communicating, "Stay in the truck."

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Just letting people know verses, if people respond themselves, they're going to walk ... There's a change that they're going to do something that they shouldn't.

Fred Radunzel:

Yep. Some examples of some visual ques, as well as map holders. We're talking signs, tags, floor tape, maybe barricades, pipe markers, some of that stuff. When it goes down, you need to be able to clearly identify what's what, how to get out of there, what you can touch, what you shouldn't be touching, what you need to stay away from.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

All of that stuff.

Dave White:

And it helps the response, too.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

So, again-

Fred Radunzel:

Somebody is coming from outside the building, you need to help everybody out.

Dave White:

Yeah, I'm sitting there looking-

Fred Radunzel:

"What do I got here?"

Dave White:

I'm looking at a pipe and I go, "What is that?"

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

If it's water, "Okay, I can deal with water." If it's hydrofluoric acid or something like that-

Fred Radunzel:

I don't want to use an ax to get somebody out of there.

Dave White:

Not going to that.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

So, seek and shelter, and then maybe its knowing when to evacuate would be next?

Dave White:

That's having that alarm cases. Who is the champion that blows the whistle?

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Meaning, whether it's an active shooter, a lot of that stuff is going to be generated by listening for an alarm. It could be an internal fire alarm. It could be the most ... Towns of any size will have a weather siren or something that goes off.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

When that's triggered, it's, "Hey. Okay, let's just go through the motions," per se, but in an effort to try to not have to go through a-

Fred Radunzel:

For sure.

Dave White:

Hopefully a funeral or emergency room as we kind of started everything in.

Fred Radunzel:

Then, now you've realized that it's safe to go outside because the weather is past us and everything, but still, you're in a building. You might have some dangerous shit that's going on inside of your building, so you've got to kind of have a post-disaster assessment before people start climbing out. There could be, the pipe that you're talking about, that got crushed by something, and all of a sudden, this chemical is in the air and everyone needs to be wearing a respirator before they start exiting outside of that. Or, you need to get a couple gas detectors fired up to make sure that the confined space that someone is on is safe to go through.

Then, maybe it's, "This wasn't a hazard when we started the day, but now because of all this shit that just happened, this is a hazard. So, I need to block that off so that people don't walk in there and try to look at that stuff."

Dave White:

That's a very good point. When you're making your place where you're going to weather out, you need to make sure there is some level of easy egress out of that, so that you don't go, "This is the safest place before and during the storm, but after the storm, this is the worst possible place on the planet that we could be because we're in the middle of a nuclear reactor waiting. We made it through, but now everybody is going to have radiation poisoning because we didn't' pay enough attention to that."

Fred Radunzel:

So, probably most importantly, all of this stuff that we're talking about is that when you have this plan, you have to practice it. You have to practice it and practice it over and over again until it becomes second nature to people. Otherwise ... Even still, it's going to happen, that people ... It's happening. Everyone is freaking out.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

Like you're at a concert. There's a shooter at the concert, and everyone sprints for the door and they trample each other. Everyone kills each other trying to get out of the building, instead of what's happening into it because you don't practice that situation and you panic.

Dave White:

Yep.

Fred Radunzel:

So, the more prepared you can be, the better shot you've got to everyone making it out of there.

Dave White:

Bad one.

Fred Radunzel:

What?

Dave White:

Self-target shot.

Fred Radunzel:

Shot?

Dave White:

I'm just messing with you.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay. I missed even the joke.

Dave White:

Yeah. Good enough.

Fred Radunzel:

We'll call that for the day, unless you want to talk. Is there anything else you want to hit on on that?

Dave White:

No.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay, cool.

So, moving on to our dumb ass of the week this week. It's hot, so we're moving around. The residential roofer is out again. This is one that happens every single Spring and Summer. Is there a residential roofing standard for fall protection as of yet, to your knowledge, that exists?

Dave White:

It's on and off, and when it's on, it's narrowly enforced.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay. So, you still see-

Dave White:

Residential roofing is still this black hole.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

It's hard.

Fred Radunzel:

You're rolling over gutters in the bushes, hoping they land in bushes.

Dave White:

Oh, yeah. The right kind of bushes.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, not a thorn bush.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

I'll take a thorn bush verses a driveway. I'll take my chances.

Dave White:

You can, probably head trauma, you'll come out. Yeah, you're going to come out ahead.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, I don't know how to tackle it, whether it's requiring the people that you hire to keep themselves safe, or what. I guess it's all on the contractor. Talking about the residential roofer that doesn't want to wear fall protection because he doesn't want to buy this stuff because it's cumbersome while he's up there trying to do his job.

Dave White:

Yeah, but a lot of that is just missed numbers. There's enough stuff out there these days, that it's not as hard as it used to be.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

I would challenge people to just go out there and look at something new if you're doing that, but again, a lot of it, "What is the slope of the surface that we're on?" If you've got tow bars to hold on, you probably, again, your risk is a lot higher. I hate to say this, but how high, high are you? Meaning-

Fred Radunzel:

Right. "Is it death if I fall off of this, or is it maybe a fractured ankle?"

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

Let's do a risk assessment.

Dave White:

Realistically, I've got to say, you've got a good chance because, when you look at people ... That's what's always funny. When you look at where people actually die, more people die like in that 4 or 5 foot range than if you get above the 10 foot range because, at that point in time, you haven't had time to correct and usually your head hits.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Once you get the head trauma, that's where a lot of those low distance falls, that's what gets you. It's not the fall. It's not your shoulder hitting or a bone breaking, it's your melon got split open and now you've got swelling on the brain and you're dead.

Fred Radunzel:

So, there's fall protection out there for the residential roofer. So, protect yourself. Don't be a dumb ass.

Dave White:

And, let me just add something to that.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Give somebody a break. Also, when you look at the reason when there's so many accidents and incidents, it's still the factor of fatigue comes into anything.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

If it's hotter than hell and you're not doing electrolyte replacement or drinking enough water, you're going to become fatigue. Your judgment is going to be impaired, and at that point in time, you might as well be drunk because you, basically, are operating at about the same capacity.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay. Let's move to a Q&A for the week. A few questions here. We'll hammer through them and we'll move on.

Number 1: How should I approach servicing and maintenance for emergency safety showers and eyewash stations?

Dave White:

Well, depends on who you are.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

Well, depends on who you are.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

'Cause a lot of people still want to sit there and go, "Well, our eye wash stations are those bottles." Well, that's more first aid. That's not ... I still struggle to call that an eye wash station because when you look at the standard, it's going to require a continuous flow. It's got rules.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

It's gotta be tepid water. There's all these little rules that go with it to call it that.

Fred Radunzel:

Yup.

Dave White:

So, first of all is identifying the fact that you got what you got. Let's say it's an eye wash station is ... You have to test them and inspect them. Make sure that they work. Make sure that they're clean. Make sure that they work correctly. Make sure that, like a lot of the newer systems that are out there for eye wash that are not plumbed, you need to make sure ... how long has that water been in there?

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

There are inspection alarms and tools out there. We got one on our website that Fendall makes is basically it's a little countdown clock that says you can put how often you want to inspect it.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

It kinda gives you a go, no-go, so that somebody walking past going, "Why in the hell's that ..."

Fred Radunzel:

Flashing.

Dave White:

"Why's that flashing?"

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Usually if something's flashing or it's red or something like that you should go over and kinda ... Universally, I think we've got red and green down.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

And usually that's what a lot of alarms will do is green. Yeah, thumbs up.

Fred Radunzel:

It's a go.

Dave White:

Red, time out. Let's blow the whistle.

Fred Radunzel:

No, no, no. Not today.

Dave White:

But again, depending on what you're dealing with, it can be chosen by employer or it's mandated. Most of them need to give a once-over at least once a month just to make sure that ...

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

I will task everybody that's listening to this podcast - as you're walking around. The little bottles we said are a bad idea? You're gonna see them everywhere.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Pay attention to how many of them have actually opened and about half the solutions out of. It will be ... you will laugh yourself silly because I would say probably one in four bottles that I see is actually been opened and there's part of the bottle is missing.

Fred Radunzel:

And there's dust and crap right around the rim of it.

Dave White:

And there's ... all over the top.

Fred Radunzel:

Dirt. Put that right in your eyeball.

Dave White:

And it's just sitting there.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

That's just a funny casual side that you can ... When you walk through, I don't care whether it's a restaurant or an airport or whatever, I see this stuff and I just laugh 'cause I'm like, "They should care." But I can understand where it's overlooked, but it's kinda ..."

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, yeah. For sure. One thing I started seeing, I seen it a couple times now, it's the old eye wash station that's sitting there and you're like, "What is going on with this old dirty eye wash station?" And they're like, "Oh no. We have another one that's right over here. We put in a new one over here." It's like, "Well tear that one out of there so that way when someone's panicking and they've got stuff in their eyes and they're, "Where's the eye wash station?" They don't run to this dirty old one from 1994 that hasn't been serv-

Dave White:

Doesn't even work.

Fred Radunzel:

It has no plumbing to it even. They pulled the pipes from it.

Dave White:

That's a valid point. I actually have seen that.

Fred Radunzel:

So, number two. Differences between the EN and ANSI glove cut resistant standard, and which should we be following?

Dave White:

If we're in the United States, it's a mixture. So, when we look at ... what it refers to is from a standpoint is it looks at the US not the EN. EN 388 is kind of the standard that covers puncture, tear, abrasion. Can test thermal ability. There's all kinds of little things that can happen under there.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

From and OSHA standpoint it refers back to EN for everything but cut and then it refers to ANSI for the cut portion.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

You'll see a lot of numbers on gloves and it depends on really what you're looking for. Most of the time people are looking for a cut resistance on a glove to be is what they're looking at the labeling.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

It can be other things because maybe ...

Fred Radunzel:

Abrasion might be-

Dave White:

Abrasion may be important to you. If you need a higher abrasion then you're gonna look at that EN score and ... trying to remember. It's act professionally. ACTP. So, it's Abrasion, Cut,

Fred Radunzel:

Tear.

Dave White:

Tear, Puncture in the EN 388.

Fred Radunzel:

Yup.

Dave White:

I have to remember a little acronym otherwise I'll never ... You look at the numbers and everybody's like, "What's this mean?" "Hold on a second I gotta think about this a little bit because I'm not really sure which one, which number is which."

Fred Radunzel:

But, we do still find that someone will, "I need a cut level four. I need a cut level five."

Dave White:

People get fixated on a number.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Instead of what, which number they actually need.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, what do they actually need, right? Okay. Cool.

Dave White:

Because we're actually seeing an uptick is the market, when everybody came in there and they rushed to cut resistance, everybody just went straight to two. So, there was threes, fours, and fives but nobody bought them because there was such a range of things and they didn't really know why. Now the four is the new two. We have more and more customers requesting to go up in cut resistance. They've identified, "We will ..." At first it was, "We weren't wearing any cut resistant gloves and we got cut. So, we put something on."

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Now they're realizing, "Well, we don't cut as many people, but were still having them." And so, they kinda, they either go up in protection or they have a knee jerk.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

'Cause we'll have people go-

Fred Radunzel:

"I need a nine!"

Dave White:

Yeah. "I need a nine." No, you probably ... Let's take a look at this.

Fred Radunzel:

You don't need to go from a two to a nine just because you have cuts. You can go from a two to a three and you'll have twice the protection.

Dave White:

Because you're sacrificing a lot of different things. One is obviously as you go up, cost. One costs more than the other.

Fred Radunzel:

Yup.

Dave White:

The other one is all of the sudden you've got dexterity and you've got issues where people are taking their gloves off to do their job, which is ... They're not in the right glove if they have to do that.

Fred Radunzel:

Right. Cool. All right. Last one I have is, can you provide some tips for heavy retractables not pulling down our harnesses?

Dave White:

Well, the first thing would be to buy lighter weight self-retracting lanyards.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

You have some of them out there that still have metal housings or old school stuff, but limiting the weight of the actual, if it's a twin leg or single leg SRL. Most of the time you can get a single leg down under two pounds nowadays.

Fred Radunzel:

Yup.

Dave White:

Whether it's a ... I'm trying to think of some of the trade names of them.

Fred Radunzel:

Nano-Lock?

Dave White:

Nano-Lock would be one that's small.

Fred Radunzel:

Miller ...

Dave White:

Turbo ... Twin Turbo is the double leg. Can't believe I-

Fred Radunzel:

We're all drawing blanks here.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

MightyLite? Didn't it used to be MightyLite or something different?

Dave White:

MightyLite was the true retractables.

Fred Radunzel:

Diablo. Guardian has the Diablo.

Dave White:

Guardian has the Diablo. Everybody's got ... It's hard to keep up with all these names or whatever.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

But trying to get a lighter weight device will help that. Having a ... how to say? Not the cheapest harness out there 'cause a lot of times the way that they're designed is not conducive to having a lot of weight on that D-ring. It causes that D-ring over a day to all of the sudden you know, you're gonna be Peter Pan when you actually fall instead of actually ... how the harness is designed.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Meaning some harnesses will have a fixed webbing around the D-ring. Some of them now, in the back pad, will have and insert to where you can put it to where you're not hanging it off the dorsal D-ring.

Fred Radunzel:

Right. The D-ring can be sort of sewn in, so it doesn't move within the padding.

Dave White:

Yeah. Yep. But getting a system that's really designed for it. And a lot of times it's just in the cost of the harness because it's not typically a compliance level $50, $60 harness. You're usually gonna be over $100.

Fred Radunzel:

I would still say the number one issue though is fit. Would be having that harness on correctly and tight enough against your body.

Dave White:

No doubt about it.

Fred Radunzel:

'Cause otherwise, if it's a little bit loose and you put any kind of weight on your back, it's going to move right away if it's not tight up against your body and fit correctly.

Dave White:

Yup.

Fred Radunzel:

That'd be the first thing I'd look at. So, cool. We'll close those up for this week and wait until next week for more exciting questions.

I don't know if you've seen this, but there was a case of a kid that was shot and killed, I think it was in Maryland, and his family, instead of doing the typical open casket and having where the casket is there, it's open, the guy's laying there on his back, they had him embalmed and they're considering it extreme embalming. So he's propped up in a chair, embalmed in a chair with sunglasses on. His Kyrie Irving basketball jersey on holding a video game controller with the TV on right in front of him and a bag of Cheetos sitting next to him. That's ... so you go to the funeral and you walk up and it's just the kid sitting there as he was. It's starting to become a new trend.

I saw another one of a guy sitting in his taxi cab that he drove for 30 years or something like that. You go to the funeral and they're not laying in a casket. They're in an action pose.

Dave White:

You can't see this, but I have a look of disgust on my face. I mean ... I have enough ... I'm kind of a redneck and sometimes I'm like, "Don't you have enough animals hanging off the wall? Why do you need more stuff to ..." I can't imagine going, "Hey. Hey Bill the taxidermist. Can you come over and get my son in a three-point stance here?"

Fred Radunzel:

There's your photo.

Dave White:

That's awful.

Fred Radunzel:

That was by ... And then part of me is like, "That's awesome." Your lasting image of that person it's laying there dead, it's playing video games.

Dave White:

No.

Fred Radunzel:

Disagree? Hard disagree?

Dave White:

No. I'm literally disgusted. The rest of my life I'm like, "Can you believe that somebody's parents would show them off like that?"

Fred Radunzel:

All right. So, let's say you're not disgusted though and you had to be embalmed at your funeral doing one activity for your family and friends to come walk by. What are you doing?

Dave White:

I don't even know what to say because I've already told my ... I have a coffee can that sits in my window at home-

Fred Radunzel:

That's dad's coffee can?

Dave White:

Yeah. When they're done. Don't even pay. They're gonna want $500 for some urn. Just put me in a coffee can. No. I don't even know what to say. I guess you could put me at my desk mashing keys or whatever with a headset on.

Fred Radunzel:

With papers all around you. Holding your head in your hands stressed out sweating.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

Have a fountain hooked up so you're constantly dripping sweat.

Dave White:

So, I got a little bit ... I don't sweat that much.

Fred Radunzel:

Sitting ... No, you're so stressed out from this stuff.

Dave White:

Oh. Well.

Fred Radunzel:

Just trying to think of something to have a cool action shot.

Dave White:

There you go.

Fred Radunzel:

All right. That segment fell kinda flat on its face. I didn't get quite the reaction I was going for.

Dave White:

I wasn't ready for that one.

Fred Radunzel:

Nope. I probably should have warned you a head of time. "Hey, we're gonna be ... I'm gonna show a picture of a dead kid if you don't mind."

SO! For that exciting conclusion to this episode of Dave and Bacon's Safety Tales. Definitely talk to the new guy on your crew. Talk to employees that aren't listening. Let 'em know about us. We appreciate a growing audience. Reach out to us if you have questions or concerns or just want to say, "Hey, I think you guys are doing a great job." Or, "Hey I think you guys suck. Stop talking about golfing or fishing and just get to the ... get down to the meat and potatoes. That's all I want hear. The rest of it's BS." Let us know.

Dave White:

Not going to hurt our feelings.

Fred Radunzel:

Right. That's it for us today. We're back again next week with another episode. Get home safe tonight. Safety seems like common sense, but really, it's just not the case. Gotta think about what we're doing and be prepared. So, go have a beer, we'll see you next week. Safety has no quittin time. Thanks.

Intro Speaker:

Thanks for listening in to Dave & Bacon's Safety Tales brought to you by Quad City Safety. Send us your questions on Facebook, Linkedin, or Twitter at Quad City Safety, #safetytales. Or email them to Fred at quadcitysafety.com. He's the guy keeping this mess of a show in line.

If you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes. It's a kickass way to show that you care about safety.