Broadcast Writer

By Vicki W. Kipp
December 1, 2001
Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) Chapter 24 Newsletter

While writing this series, I attended a course called ‘Certified Tower Climbing Safety and Rescue Training’ at ComTrain. Headquartered in Monroe, Wisconsin, ComTrain (Figure 1) is a training company that specializes in tower safety and tower technology training.

Run by tower industry veteran Winton W. Wilcox (Figure 2), ComTrain got its name and logo from Wilcox’s fondness of trains. ComTrain was created to respond to the lack of standards for tower safety training. They offer courses at their facility in Monroe, and on request at locations around the US and the world. ComTrain offers two courses for tower technicians: ‘Tower Climbing Safety and Rescue’ and ‘Basic Tower Technology.’ Each course includes a textbook authored by ComTrain.

INTRODUCTIONS

Broadcasters have a friend in Winton Wilcox. He started his career as a radio disc jockey, and had his first climb when his boss told him to ascend the station’s tower.

My class contained students from all over: Alabama, Iowa, Illinois, New Hampshire, Missouri, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Although I was the only woman in this class, women comprise about 3% of ComTrain students overall.

LEGACY

The course began with an acknowledgment of those who work as tower technicians. Winton Wilcox likes to call them “the last true cowboys.” He admired the independent and strong-willed nature of the tower technician. When a tower technician reveals what they do for a living, there is a standard reaction from the general population: “You’re crazy!”

SERIOUS BUSINESS

Bringing an aura of tranquility to the classroom, Wilcox reeled off a staggering list of tower technicians who have died on the job during the past few years. The examples were upsetting to me, and perhaps more so for my fellow students who spend most of their days up on a tower.

On December 23, 2000, a man working in West Virginia bled to death while hanging at 250 feet after a fall.

A tower technician, his 17-year-old son, and 19-year-old friend fell to their death on December 3, 1999, in Statesville, North Carolina because of a capstan winch accident.

The men were being hoisted up the side of the tower by an electric winch. The tower technician’s wife was guiding rope through the winch when it became slack and jumped off the winch, causing the rope and the men to fall to the earth. A man or a piece of equipment getting tangled in the tower probably caused the slack. The wife sustained serious permanent rope burns while attempting to stop the rope. Sadly, capstan-winch related deaths occur at a rate of about four per year.

The fatality rate for tower technicians is 11% while the overall fatality rate for construction workers is 4%. The list of tower fatalities goes on.

Addressing the ‘rowdy’ reputation of some tower technicians, Wilcox told of small hotels that still have wall plaques warning, “No tower crews.” There was a Canadian tower company who initially recruited roughnecks from the oil industry to do tower work.

This company developed an interesting technique for recruiting tower technicians for their US jobs. After arriving at the location of the tower assignment, the job leader would hang out in a local bar on a weeknight. He would hire whoever was still in the bar and standing at 1 AM, rationalizing that the bar patrons must be both unemployed and tough.

Rumor has it that this particular Canadian company enforced the rule, “No vomiting below 300 feet.” Reportedly, the tower crew was known to go straight from the job to the tavern at the end of the day. Needless to say, this type of performance is not acceptable in today’s increasingly professional tower industry.

MOTIVATION

Outsourcing tower safety training is not cheap. Between the cost of safety equipment for each technician, the cost of taking a course or hiring a skills trainer, and time spent away from a paying tower job, tower safety training costs add up. But the cost for tower safety training seams quite reasonable compared to the cost of a serious injury or death, an OSHA fine, and safety gear which must be retired after one fall.

Besides lowering the risk of worker injury or death, tower safety training can save companies from the time-consuming project of evaluating safety equipment to purchase and developing safety policies. Staying abreast of the latest safety techniques and equipment is a demanding responsibility. A tower safety course uses techniques and equipment that have been tested and proven effective for tower jobs. Companies can receive assistance in installing an internal training program to comply with contractually specified client safety demands and government regulations.

When we finished the course, if we had successfully completed our written exam and field test, we received a certificate and wallet card from ComTrain documenting that we had completed safety training. This proof of training reassures clients and is an attractive feature when competing for contracts.

Prior to this course, some of my classmates had completed ‘RF Site Safety Awareness’ training with Radio Frequency International (RFI) and also OSHA 500 ‘OSHA Standards for the Construction Industry’ training. Manufacturers of Tower Safety Equipment such as DBI/Sala, ROSE manufacturers, and Trachtl offer training schools.

WHY THE MORTALITY?

The tower industry is driven by the potential for large profits. The wireless carriers have $17 billion in deposits with the FCC for carrier licenses. The work demand is significantly higher than the supply of workers.

The pool of people who want to work on towers is somewhat limited. The fact that one in three applicants for tower technician jobs don’t pass drug-screening test, even with six weeks advance notice, does not make hiring any easier.

If applicants pass that test, they are hired. Often, they are sent out on a job without any training. In the past, it was common for the same crew of tower technicians to work together for several years. The technicians knew what to expect from each other. With today’s rapid growth and frequent turnover in the tower industry, tower technicians don’t have that luxury.

During the class, the students received multiple phone calls from their bosses about jobs requiring immediate attention. Although the class was only two days, the tower technicians acknowledged that they had a hard time being out of the field that long due to their workload.

MEDICAL ATTENTION

Often, a tower technician will initially survive the injuries caused by falling from the tower, only to bleed to death while hanging suspended in their safety harness. Medical attention often cannot be administered until the injured tower technician can be lowered down to emergency medical personnel waiting on the ground.

Rescue crews may struggle to get a person down a few hundred feet to the ground. Although fire departments with ladder trucks can sometimes retrieve an injured party hanging off a tower, the height limit for the ladders is usually ten stories. Given training in tower rescue and the necessary equipment, a trained tower technician can lower an injured tower technician to the ground very quickly.

Speed is of the essence when you are hanging off a tower in a safety harness, since a harness fits tightly around the body and can cut off circulation if you’re suspended in it. Although a well-designed harness that fits well is tolerable when climbing, it will soon become uncomfortable if you’re hanging suspended by your back D-ring.

OSHA

OSHA is watching the tower industry very closely. The agency has dictated some rules that tower technicians must follow. At least two tower technicians must be present for any tower job. OSHA requires technicians to assess workplace fall hazards before beginning to climb.

If you are 6 feet or more off of the ground or working within 6 feet of an edge, you must be 100% fall protected. The only exception to this requirement is a situation where being 100% fall protected would be more dangerous than not being fall protected.

A formal documented safety meeting must be held at least once a week, according to CFR 1926. Before entering a known hazardous work situation, all employees present must agree on an emergency plan.

An employer is obligated to provide emergency medical attention to an employee within a reasonable proximity of an injury. This means that the tower technician must have access to a medical care facility within a limited distance from the job site. Failure to follow these safety rules can result in a significant fine. SITE

SAFETY MEETING

At the beginning of each workday, a tower crew should have a site safety meeting. This meeting must be documented. In the words of a classmate, “If it isn’t written down, it didn’t happen.”

At this meeting, there are topics that must be discussed:

• where the first aid kit is
• where emergency rescue equipment is stored
• phone number for and location of nearest emergency medical facility
• driving directions to the site so that you can tell emergency responders how to find you
• emergency response plan for that specific job
• site hazard assessment
• pre-climb inspection of equipment and tower
• goals and tasks to be completed that day

SITE HAZARD ASSESSMENT

Before climbing, the tower technician needs to observe the weather conditions, and determine if it is safe to climb. Weather hazards for tower climbing include snow, wind, rain, lightning, ice, moisture, sun, heat, and very high or very low humidity.

In some climates, storms occur daily in the summer. While climbers can’t stop work based on the possibility of a storm, they may be able to predict a storm by monitoring the AM radio band from 540 – 580 kHz. If static is heard, it indicates that a storm is approaching. If a technician hears thunder, they need to get off the tower.

Lack of daylight, as in night climbing, is another environmental condition that is especially hazardous for technicians.

Live natural hazards such as birds, snakes, scorpions, and bees can threaten the safety of a tower technician. Birds, for example, are possessive of their tower space. Songbirds will dive at a tower technician’s face, possibly causing the technician to lose their balance and fall.

Ospreys build large nests on towers. Since ospreys are a protected species, tower technicians must take great care to avoid the nest while working. In one case, ospreys resented the tower climbers climbing up the tower so much that the ospreys caught and dropped large bass fish on the climbers. The besieged tower technicians collected the fish and fried them for dinner. Predatory birds such as hawks and eagles pick up snakes and fly off, become distracted or threatened by the snake, and deposit them on the tower. Wasps swarm to radiating antennas.

Humans can be just as dangerous to a tower technician as are forces of nature. Drunks, unhappy neighbors, and disgruntled hunters sometimes shoot at towers, creating a dangerous situation for any technician who is climbing that tower at the time.

Structural hazards are a serious concern when climbing a tower. Although the EIA/TIA 222F standard describes the minimum requirements for a tower structure, the 222F standard is not legally enforced. Compliance is voluntary.

Tower technicians must ensure that the structures they ascend are safe to tie off to and won’t collapse. It is up to the individual technicians to visually inspect a tower before climbing to look for signs of weakness.

I was quite surprised to learn that the government doesn’t regulate the structural safety of towers.

While tower owners are required to provide a safe working environment to their employees, that requirement does not apply to any subcontractors that they hire to work on their tower.

As long as the tower owners don’t allow their own employees to climb on the tower, they are off the hook. Many tower insurance policies state that the tower owners cannot allow their own employees to climb their towers. The electrical lines that power tower lights and appurtenances can be a hazard.

Since ComTrain has no ties to any manufacturer, they have safety equipment from various manufacturers available for students to use. For most pieces of equipment, they have versions of a particular item from several different manufacturers so students can try it out and determine which version is best for them. I tried on several climbing harnesses before finding one that would work for me.

During class, we passed around various pieces of equipment (Figure 3) such as a carabineer, rope terminator, Roll-Gliss, and lanyards. Lanyards come in several types: shock absorbing lanyard, Y-lanyard, positioning lanyard, self-retracting lanyard. The self-retracting lanyard limits your fall to 3 1/2 feet.

We discussed using and caring for climbing ropes, concentrating on kern mantle rope. Kern mantle rope is similar to co-axial cable in design, and can lift thousands of pounds.

If using a safety climb device, we learned to attach it to a ring on the center of our body – chest, not waist. We learned that a carabineer, which is capable of withstanding many kilonewtons of force, has consistent material and can be side hooked.

WHAT NOT TO DO

Under the heading of ‘what not to do’, we learned not to over-bend or choke a rope, not to side load a hook, and not to intentionally jump off the tower. Rope can be bent up to ten times its diameter before it looses strength. Choking a rope will reduce its rated strength by 25%.

Side loading a hook can cause its clasp to open up unintentionally.

After seeing a demonstration of how the shock absorbing material inside a lanyard absorbs the energy of a fall, students might be tempted to bungee jump off the tower to experience the absorption first hand. It may be tempting, but it’s an expensive learning experience. An impulsive jump to test the equipment will be a $400 – $800 jump since all of the equipment that has been exposed to an impact will have to be taken out of service.

The electrical lines that power tower lights and appurtenances can be a hazard. Tower technicians should avoid climbing on electrical lines. Exposure to RF energy also needs to be considered.

Wilcox concluded by advising us to adapt the mindset “Something at this site is trying to get me. I need to find it before it finds me.”

SAFETY EQUIPMENT

We learned that we must maintain 100% fall protection while climbing a tower. If we are not using fall restraint equipment (such as a positioning lanyard, or safety climb device), then we must have 100% fall arrest attachment (such as a shock absorbing lanyard or self-retracting lanyard).

We don’t have to have both fall restraint and fall arrest equipment– one or the other is fine. Although their names sound similar, we learned that there is a critical difference between fall restraint and fall arrest equipment.

Fall restraint, such as a safety railing, prevents you from falling in the first place. Fall arrest equipment won’t prevent a fall, but it will save your life if you fall. While it won’t necessarily prevent injury, fall arrest equipment will give you a chance of survival.

TYING OFF

Winton Wilcox told us two stories that illustrated the importance of choosing wisely the anchor points that you tie off to. During a discussion of how to attach a personal fall arrest system (PFAS) to a sterile roof, a roof with no structures to connect your PFAS equipment to that is, Wilcox discussed a job at a roof antenna site in New Jersey. The crew tied off by running a rope over a sterile roof to the bumpers of two trucks that were parked on opposites sides of the building. The trucks used did not belong to the tower crew, but to individuals who happened to have parked there.

Without asking permission to use the trucks or communicating to the owners, the trucks were tied on to. Unfortunately, one of the truck owners didn’t notice the rope tied to his back bumper, and started driving away. I’d venture a guess that the tower crew asked first before tying on to another vehicle.

In a separate incident, at a tower in the Burlington Northern Rail yard, a tower technician tied his or her tagline, a restrictive line used to control the position of a mass during ascent or descent, to a train engine. It was assumed that the train would remain parked, and so there was a bit of a problem when the train started chugging down the rail. The tagline survived for about 50 yards until the pulling force of the train caused it to snap. The tower, which had been pulled to the side with great force, reverberated back and forth when the tagline broke.

RESCUE TECHNIQUES

We learned about five different rescue techniques: winch, boom truck supplied by an outside service provider, suspension by a Fisk descender (Figure 4), suspension by a Roll-Gliss descender, and manual rescue. The most chilling rescue story we heard involved a manual rescue.

Before the 100% attachment initiative was even an idea, two tower technicians were working high off the ground on the inside perimeter of a steel-lattice tower. Out of the corner of his eye, the technician who was working at a lower height saw something falling. An involuntary reaction caused him to reach out and grab on to the falling object. He grasped a jacket and held on tight. He pulled the jacket, which contained the other technician who had fallen, to the tower face. This is an example of a manual rescue. The technician who saved his friend reportedly still has nightmares about this event.

THE CLIMB

The morning of the climb, we were all concerned that the cold gray sky and rain sprinkles would prevent our rescue exercises. But we just piled on more layers of clothes to our mandated climbing outfit –hard hat (Figure 5), hard-soled boots, sturdy pants, long sleeved shirt with collar, and gloves– and carried on.

First, we had a site safety meeting. We all noted where the first aid kit was placed at the base of the tower. Wilcox pointed out the Monroe Hospital and gave us driving directions. We talked about our rescue plan for the self-supporting tower that we would climb. We discussed site hazards and glanced with trepidation at the birds perched on the tower top.

To pass our tests, we needed to perform one rescue and one exercise of being rescued. Starting with the rescue exercise, I attached a carabineer between my front D-ring and the safe climb device mounted on the tower. If I slipped from a climbing peg as I was ascending, the safe climb would lock to stop my fall within two feet.

The climb was a thrill! Resting for a moment at height, hanging hands-free off the side of the tower, enjoying the view and the fresh air, it wasn’t too hard to understand why people choose this career. Some technicians claim that climbing is addictive.

Using the rescue methods that ComTrain taught me, a Fisk descender, a rope, and a carabineer, I was able to lower (Figure 6) other students who were bigger and heavier than I to the ground safely by attaching their harness to mine and walking down the side of the tower.

CONCLUSION

“The worst thing that I deal with is tokenism,” exclaimed Winton Wilcox as he urged us to integrate our new knowledge and skills into how we do our jobs. Earlier in the course, Wilcox had told us “You’re never going to do something because someone tells you to. You’re going to do it because you believe in it.”

Not only had he dispensed the safety training that we needed to comply with OSHA rules, but he had made a point of explaining why tasks needed to be completed so that we were sold on doing them that way.

Information for this article came from ComTrain.

Figure 1. ComTrain tower training company.

Figure 2. Winton Wilcox. Photo by ComTrain 

Figure 3. Lanyard, carabiner, rope terminator, and kern mantle rope.

Figure 4. Ed Van Ness demonstrates how to properly insert kern mantle rope through a Fisk descender.

Figure 5. My ANSI-approved ComTrain climbing hard hat.

Figure 6. I’m using a Fisk descender to lower an injured technician to the ground. Photo by ComTrain.