14.04.2016

Harness saves life

A man was injured in Las Vegas, Nevada on Wednesday when the boom of the bucket truck he was working from dropped suddenly from around 10 metres to horizontal, following a mechanical failure. It only stopped when it struck the machines boom support rack.

The corresponding catapult action threw him upwards with a substantial force. Thankfully he was wearing a harness with lanyard attached and was prevented from being thrown to his almost certain death. The man had been working on a large billboard for TradeMark Sign Company at the time.
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The bucket truck after the incident - it was reportedly not greatly damaged

When fire fighters arrived on scene, the man was unconscious and dangling from his harness, a metre or so from the ground he was rushed to hospital in critical condition. The rescue services have confirmed that had he not been wearing the harness with the short lanyard the man would have been unlikely to have survived.

The Las Vegas Fire and Rescue department stated that it does not investigate industrial or work-related accidents, but did say that it had informed the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the incident.