Near death experience

heyyyy i used to climb to the top rung of ladders aswell... cept one time when i thought it would be easier to just climb the side of the trusss, anyway it started to sway and eventually half fell down luckily it got close to the wall and got wedged and i was able to climb down.

at my school, we used 2 have boom arms on the side of the hall, and i did a show with the drama teacher and he decided he wanted to put a light on one, so he got in the roof, dropped a patch down then whent and got an extension ladder, fully extended it climbed tot he top with the ladder, and as i looked over i saw the ladder start to slide.. i wasnt sure if it was happening was like a slow motion thing, anyway he slid right down the wall and grabity bbought him 2 a crashing holt against the ground...

so comming back to a few points b4, always get someone to hold the base of ladders when ur going up high and a law was actually passed in australia to wear hard hats on stage, however it was overruled because it also ment that actors had to wear them during performances.. so i think they are re doing it
 
Well, here's my stupid story. I was doing a show that was outside, and we were using 24 foot lighting trees. Anyways, the fuse blew and I had to go up and replace it in the dimmer pack (which was mounted at the top of the tree). So there is am, at the top of the ladder, on the top rung. I pull the fuse out, and there apparently is a bit of electricity still running around, it shocks me and catches me unawares, and I almost fell 24 feet and would have landed on top of a picnic table. I managed to recover my balance and not fall.
 
I've had lots of near death experiences on stage, i've ridden a fly line that sucked, only went 30ft or so on a 60ft grid, before the guys on the ground stopped it.
But my best story involves my former TD, stupid woman, she wired the plug on a light wrong swapping the ground and hot, a big no no, any ways i went up to the bay to hang and focus it, and the ground is run through the pipes for some stupid reason, anyway when she turned the light up, i got a nice buzz, just glad i let go, when it was still low, because when it got to 100% it arced a probably would have killed me if i was still hanging on, she got fired, shortly after, for destroying a brand new leg.
 
holy s***, that's gotta suck. are you ok, did you break anything? I thought it sucked falling off the ladder to the grid, and it was only a 20ft. fall.
 
Surprisingly and lucky for me i didnt break anything. i didnt fight the fall (thank you acting class for that!) so i went down and landed on my back. i got the wind knocked out of me pretty bad and of course had some nice bruises and was sore. and somehow i managed a black eye. im just talented like that.

its kinda funny actually, we never told the director why i was all bruised up and stuff!

and as for the TD, she gave me a 5er to recover and then yelled at me to get back up there. i love her (NOT!).

and then later that week i was up in the genie stading on the basket itself, reaching into the cats for cable. and some moron below decided to push the manual lower button. so i was hanging from the catwalk for a good 5 minutes before anyone saw me. thats a good example of why to NOT work alone! i guess that idiot didnt realize that there was someone up there! but i assure you, he found out there was someone up there! i made him be my assistant/slave for the next week. i rather enjoyed it!

:oops:
 
f*** that, i fell off an outdoor stage it was only around 10ft. hit a lot of the supports underneath, and sat around for a few minutes to recover, then told them i wasn't working in that kind of enviroment and that i was going home.
 
ya, ummm thats basically what i said to her. i went up to the booth (with help from a few freinds.) and sat for a while.

ahh... fun times....

peace
 
hmm..i'm starting to notice a common trend.....a lot of these injuries are occuring when one person is trying to work alone...since they couldn't get any help.

of course i'm not going to lecture anyone and say you shouldn't work alone, haha, i know how hard it is to find someone to actually help you......especially when they're not getting paid. last night i had to move all my sound and power cables into a tunnel running under the theater...since the fire marshall didn't like the fact that i hung them over a doorway. seems a bit picky to me....but i did it anyways. so here i am crawling down a 25' long tunnel that's only about 1.5' high, to pull 5 power cables, a snake, 4 xlr cables, and a dmx cable through this small tunnel. i had to crawl back and forth 6 times to get it all done. of course, these tunnels are part of the ventillation system as well, so i was technically working in the furnace. it was turned off of course, with a big note telling people not to turn it back on. fortunetly for me no one accidentally turned it on...but that's the good part about being the only one there. was this a near death experience? not really....but i would say it's dangerous.

of course on the same night i did accidentally place a ladder against an electrical junction box ni a section of the wall that isn't covered with drywall. and of course i didn't realize all of the weight of the ladder, and myself, was on this thing until i had finished doing my work.....so that coulda been bad. oh yeah it's a metal ladder too.

and now that all the work is done, i've been hearing that we needed to run cables through a conduit if we were to use the tunnels. screw that. this is only supposed to be a temporary install anyways since i personally own all the sound and lighting gear...and i need to be able to take the rig out of there. of course, if i do ever take the rig out, it's going to require me to pull all these damn cables back out of the tunnel.
 
I was once was almost beheaded by a projection screen,someone took off way too many counterweights and it flew down like crazy,i promptly grabbed on to it so it didn't kill anyone!
 
I fell from the FOH bar in the catwalks at the community theatre. I was wearing a body harness at the time, and it cought me before i hit the ground. A few years ago when I first got into technical work, I got myself a harness. That, and the shortest shock absorbing lanyard I could find (4 foot). It's saved my butt once, it cost me $70 for a new lanyard, but it's worth it considering the 40 foot fall onto a bunch of chairs. I'd suggest even if the theatre you work in provides some community use harnesses/lanyards, not to use them, and buy your own. That particular theatre I was in had harnesses, but they were the belt style, not a full body harness. The belt ones put too much stress and pressure on your waist when you fall. A full body harness is much more effective.
 
yes, but by law they are supposed to provide you with one, here when we do shows, we can wear our own harness, but we have to wear the one provided as well, and it's to much of a pain in the a** to wear 2.
 
Our school has two full body harnesses, as well as 6-foot shock-absorbing maynards. I think they're great, because they're light, and have a bunch of initials sewn into them that I'm told are a good thing to have. Mind you, I'm not supposed to wear them except when I have to go up in the scissor-lift, because they don;t want it to be advertised that a student can go up in it.
 
hmmm...i was once standing near a ladder talking to the designer while someone was hanging a altman zoom. since we were near the ladder, we were wearing hard hats, but the zoom dropped somehow. and landed about 2 feet away from us, on some of the house seats. it went right though the seat and left a mark on the concrete floor. that got me thinking. what use is a hardhat for a light falling on you. i understand it for small things, but my TD says to wear it incase a light falls on you.
 
ya, hard hats, are pretty useless when it comes to protecting you from a light, it could help, but it's not going to do that much.
As far as harness, yes that is good, and for all of those people wearing harness, make sure you wear them right, the first time i wore one, i put it on wrong, and the steward who was helping me put it on lifted me off the ground by the harness, and damn did it hurt, make sure you have plenty of clearance between your legs.
 
Ya, I dont think that harness law is in effect in MA. At least, I am 99% sure there isnt any harnesses @ my school. We dont have a catwalk, and our mezannes (where the fly system is located) is quite wide and has a big metal handrail. However, we do use a Genie Lift, and there is no warnings on it to wear a harness (or i dont think, anywhere to clip in a harness to) 99% of what we do is quick up and down "focus a light, and move to the next" stuff, so it would be SUPER annoying to clip into anything when we got up to the lights. (I also dont think anything up there is strong enough to hold a person, or at least was not designed to hold a person)

I personally have done an ok ammount of rockclimbing (on artificial walls and high tentsion telephone pole tripods @ a camp) and I can vouch for the fact that you REALLY want to have your harness on properly!
 
i'm not sure that it's a law, but something ocea is starting to require, the last few shows that have come through, have been very adiment that we wear their harnesses when we are up on the truss focussing. which is fine with me since i don't have a harness of my own, i usually borrow one.
 
hahaha!!!, using the feet on a genie, lol. Well i guess the college i'm currently attending actually does, but most of the time when i'm working professional gigs, no one ever touches the feet, it takes to long, we leave the feet out so we can push it. But i don't reccomend this for any of you high school/college students, it's no where near safe, i've come close to tipping it on more than one occasion doing so. And most newer genies won't let you lift it without the legs.
 
SuperCow said:
On a Genie, you clip your harness to the rails of the basket, not to a hardpoint at the top. If the feet are out, then the Genie won't tip iff you fall out of it and are attached to it by your harness.

i thought genie lifts aren't supposed to be used with fall arrest equipment? that's the same thing as clipping a harness to a scaffolding tower. and i wouldn't be so sure that having the feet out would stop it from tipping. the forces imposed on this thing from a fall can be quite a bit. it also depends on how high you have it, since that changes the center of gravity. what you want to use in the case of genie lifts and scaffolding is work positioning equipment.....at least i think that's the term. basically you use a harness to keep you inside the basket, so that you don't have the room to fall out of it. instead of relying on the harness to catch you in the event of a fall, it prevents you from ever being in a position that would allow a fall. and then it also doesn't impose any forces on the tower itself.

fall arrest equipment is really only supposed to be used on fixed structures i think.....like when you're on a truss, or in the grid. if it's a temporary structure like a genie, scaffolding, or a ladder, you run the risk of tipping it over.

i've never actually used a genie...just studied this fall arrest stuff, so if i'm wrong feel free to correct me. and by feet i'm assuming you all mean the outriggers....don't you? not using the outriggers is just asking for trouble...but as techieman33 pointed out, it's not recommended.
 

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