During my days as a safety professional at Hope Creek Nuclear Generating station in New Jersey, an employee was walking along a safe walkway (no need whatsoever for a hard hat or safety glasses) and a stick fell from the sky and hit him in the eye. We surmised during the investigation that a bird (there were plenty of birds from the marsh and river nearby) had dropped a stick and it hit the victim.
The stick had definitely fallen from above. It was a bull’s-eye (or a person’s-eye if you prefer!). His cornea was scratched and it became a recordable incident.
The next day at our daily outage meeting when it came to my turn to report on recent events I explained that we had had a recordable incident and gave the details. “What are we going to do to prevent this incident from happening again?” Was the inevitable questions posed to me by the plant manager? Without hesitation (I had thought this through the night before)
I gave him a fool-proof solution.
I said there were two guys from the maintenance department who are hunters and I was going to get them to shoot every bird within a 25-mile radius of the plant! Of course I was only teasing. But it got a fun reaction out of the other managers at the meeting. The plant manager and I knew each other well. He smiled too, shook his head and got the point. We weren’t going to do anything.
Thankfully the plant manager was a reasonable person. He agreed there was no need for a knee-jerk reaction and that what happened truly did not result from a lapse in our safety performance. It became a standing joke for a bit. Whenever anything wrong happened we blamed it on a bird flying overhead. But besides that, the event was just a number that hurt our numbers.
I’ve seen the opposite happen though, many times! Wasted time and effort on a kerfuffle that was a rare mishap without a reasonable cure. Even in hindsight; what was it that could have been done to prevent a bird from dropping a stick? Better training? Positive discipline? The victim didn’t even look up. Still, the stick scratched his cheek and of course hit his eye. (If you want to know what a kerfuffle is check out this short video I made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4b9fWfA5Is )
Have you had a similar experience? I’d love to hear about it. What did you or your company do?
‘till next time.
Richard
