“When you are on the job you need to rely on the guys you are working with. There are tons of situations where if the person you are counting on does not do their job you will end up in the hospital or even worse six feet under.”
That is a quote, as I remember it, from the safety trainer in my union apprenticeship classes. I don’t remember the guy’s name, but I remember he was always harping on things that I knew were the truth but a lot of time the rules were not being obeyed. Some of the problem stemmed from the fact that many of us were under the influence during working hours. The use of alcohol and drugs on most jobsites was taken for granted. Then there was ‘showboating’. Guys who would do dangerous stuff just to prove they could do it. And there was the fact that some people did not know how to work safely, either they did not pay attention during safety training or just did not care.
There were several accidents that happened during my forty plus year career. And to be honest, I think about 80% of them were human error. A few of those led to deaths, four friends of mine died while onsite. Three of those could have been prevented if human error was not involved. I think today the construction trades are much safer. New and more effective equipment, written safety plans, and stricter control of substances are among some of the reasons. But even with all the new stuff in place construction is a dangerous business.
For me, if the truth be known, it is one of the main reasons I was attracted to the business. I have written blogs about my perchance for dangerous stuff when I was younger. Hobbies like rock and shear face free climbing and hang gliding to name a few. I liked to take risks or maybe I was just so out of control that I had a death wish but could not take my life the conventional way. Either way for most of my addicted years I put myself in situations where death was an option.
But amazingly when on the job I did take safety seriously. Yes, I drank and did drugs while performing dangerous tasks and I was, every now and again, a ‘showboater’, still I had an almost spotless safety record. The key word here is almost. There was one incident where I put guys in danger because I was not paying attention to ALL the circumstances going on, I was not protecting all of my crew members.
Here is briefly what happened. I was working on a nuclear power plant in Elma, Washington for a concrete reinforcing company. It was our job to erect all the reinforcing for the Auxiliary Building blast walls. Most of these walls were up to five feet thick and had a lot of rebar in them. My job at the time was swing shift ‘curtain’ crew foreman. Each wall had four pretied ‘curtains’ of rebar approximately 30’ tall and 70’ long. They would come up to us on a flat-bed truck and we would rig them and set them in place. Lots of technical stuff in what I just described but the main idea was there were many things that needed to be done right and it was my job to make sure that happened.
I had been on a ‘bender’ for several days, drinking after work, sleeping a few hours then drinking some more before heading off to work. That night I was not as sharp as I should have been and did not notice that one of the vertical bars on the curtain had been cut loose. I was on the truck and did a final examination then told the crane operator to pick up the load. As he got it about 10’ in the air, the loose vertical came plunging down like a 30’ spear. It missed one of my crew members by mere feet. Not knowing if there were any more loose bars, I signaled to bring the load down quick and this made more of my crew scatter because I had not warned them what I was doing. No one was hurt, by the grace of God, but from that point I lost a lot of trust of my crew. It took months to get it back, if I ever did.
Why do I tell this story? I guess it is a good example of what can happen if you work when under the influence. But that is not all I want to share. The bigger picture that this incident reminded me of, is that when I relied solely on myself lots of bad things were bound to happen. Here is what I mean.
I have come to know and trust that God is in control. Does that mean accidents will not happen? No, but I believe if more of us rose in the morning and surrendered our day into His care we would find that many of the ‘accidents’ I just described would not occur because of several reasons, starting with a sober clear mind. Not all of us get up in the morning and distort our brains with alcohol or drugs. But how many of us are plagued by stress and pressure of our day to day life. Driving to work, texting or talking on the phone. An accident waiting to happen.
We can convince ourselves we are just multi-tasking but really, we are just about as out of control as I was that night long ago. It is really simple. Turn it over to Him. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)
Today, as I recall that night long ago, I see that I was trying to control the world around me by being conformed to that world. I have accepted Jesus transforming power and I now seek to live within God’s will. I can say I do not start a day anymore with asking God’s will be done. But there are those days where I allow this world to creep back in and like that accident waiting to happen, I need to trust and obey. I pray this day I can, how about you
Blessings John,
11/12/18
