Mobility Forum: Quickstoppers

Trouble Candy

"Mommy! Mommy! " she heard 4-year old Chyna call from the next room. "Got candy, Mommy! Got candy!" Jane looked up to see her child trot into the room, blonde hair shining in the sun streaming through the kitchen windows and red food dye surrounding her lips and fingers.

"What candy?" Jane thought with a fluttering of fear. "Chyna! Show Mommy the candy!"

Chyna opened her chubby hand and there, torn and glistening, was the silver wrapper of her over-the-counter sinus medication.

"Ohh, no!" she cried as she reached for the phone to call 911.

"This happens much more often than we would like, "said the base hospital physician as Chyna was being treated. "Children see you get candy or gum all the time from your purse. So they think that is where candy comes from. If you also carry medicines, it is very easy for a child to mistake them for a treat. If you have medicine in your handbag, keep it out of the reach of your very inquisitive child," he said, patting Chyna's head. "Next time, you may not be so lucky!"

Waxing Poetic

Kathryn stood in the bathroom door admiring the new tile floor that had just been installed over the weekend. She had spent the morning cleaning up after the workmen - scrubbing and waxing the tile floor to an immaculate shine. But, in fact, she had spent too much time! She would be late for their dinner at the Officer's Club and she desperately needed a long shower.

She gathered up a towel from the linen closet and reached in to turn on the shower. She wiped her hand, wet from the shower spray, on a hand towel and brushed her hair pinning it up off her neck. She sighed in anticipation of the upcoming shower, grabbed a bottle of shower gel and turned to step in.

Instead she found herself gazing at the ceiling, her ears ringing with the crack of bone as she hit the floor.

After her husband had heard her cries and Kathryn was taken to the emergency room for treatment, she lay uncomfortably on the hospital bed with her leg in a large, unwieldy cast.

"You are a lucky woman, Kathryn," said the orderly, shaking his head. "We see many accidents every year from slippery bathroom floors with much more serious consequences. So, instead of signing my name on your cast, I am going to write a phrase I want you to repeat over and over again: I will never wax the bathroom floor again!"

She groaned, looking down at her leg. "I will never wax the bathroom floor again!"

Birthday Batteries

"Be sure to change the batteries in your smoke alarm every year!" George heard the anchorwoman say as he poured his orange juice. "A good way to remember is to do it on your birthday!"

"You gonna change the batteries, Dad? Today's your birthday, you know," his young son called from the kitchen table.

"Yeah, yeah! I'll get around to it!" he said as he finished the morning newspaper and prepared to leave for his flight.

"Fireman Frank told us we had to have our parents check the batteries," he said solemnly. "Fireman Frank came to our school yesterday. He gave us neat stuff!"

"Ok! Ok!" muttered George, sighing as he looked at his watch. "We can't disappoint Fireman Frank now, can we?"

He searched through the kitchen drawers for fresh batteries and climbing the stairs, changed the battery in the smoke alarm outside the children's bedrooms.

"Satisfied?" he said as he looked down at his son.

"Yep!"

George remembered the smile that his son had given him when - 18 hours later- he stood in front of his smoldering home with his family. A candle had been left burning near a recliner, eventually catching it on fire. But his son, hearing the smoke alarm, had awakened his parents and his family had escaped without injury.

"Pretty bad birthday, huh, Dad?" he heard his young son say.

He looked at his family - unharmed and together. "Not true, Jimmy," he said. "I got the best birthday present ever!"

It Can Happen To You

The ringing of the office telephone interrupted my train of thought. It was TSgt Jones, the safety representative for the supply squadron. One of the workers had injured his back. Quickly, I gathered my things together and was out the door. When I arrived, he greeted me at the door and took me to see George, a 33 year-old man who worked in the receiving section. We found George sitting in the break room, rubbing his back. After the introductions were out of the way, he began to tell his story. He had been working in the section for about two years. When the injury occurred, he was bending at the waist and reaching over into a bin (large wooden box) for a spool of wire. As he picked it up, he felt a twinge in the center of his lower back. He continued working until it started to tighten up a few minutes later. That's when he informed his supervisor and I got involved. As I talked to him, he said he often lifted spools of wire from the bins. When I asked how much they weighed, he estimated 30-40 pounds. Later, I found the spools weighed 94 pounds! Several important keys to safe lifting were violated here. The first came into play when the bin was designed requiring workers to bend at the waist to extract stock. Someone should have identified this poor design. It's called identifying safety hazards within the work area. The next occurred when George misjudged the weight of the spool. You should always know what you're lifting and never exceed your physical limitations.

Note: This mishap really happened. In my twenty-one years of investigating lifting mishaps, this is the only one in which the victim was lifting more than 40 pounds. That's right, 40 pounds. Whether you're carrying tool boxes or reams of computer paper, it can happen to you. Everyone should constantly be on the lookout for situations which could cause injury. Supervisors should ensure safety lifting procedures are briefed and practiced.

The Black Marble

Recently, one of our maintainers was descending the ladder from the flight deck of a C-141 when his foot slipped off one of the rungs, causing him to lose his balance and fall. As he did, his forearm struck the corner of a toolbox resulting in a nasty laceration. Those of you familiar with these ladders can attest to the fact the distance from flight deck to aircraft floor isn't that great, but sometimes it doesn't take much. While inspecting the mishap scene, I noticed the non-skid material on the ladder rungs was worn away. That non-skid material didn't get in the condition it was in overnight. The aircraft had to leave its last stop with it in that shape. No one bothered to write it up in the forms. (It's written up now.) Our accident victim also admitted to being in somewhat of a hurry which he said may have contributed to the mishap. It has to be considered a contributing factor along with the lack of non-skid on the ladder rungs.

Safety experts tell us 88 percent of all mishaps are the result of unsafe acts. Sure, I know some of you've been up and down these ladders hundreds of times without incident and you've begun to think it won't happen to you. I tried that same approach when I first entered the safety career field. My first supervisor quickly explained his opinion of my rationale. He said you can place a black marble into a bowl of white marbles, with each marble representing each time you take a shortcut or perform an unsafe act. You then begin to draw out the marbles one at a time until you get to the black marble which represents the mishap. This is much the same as playing Russian roulette. Regardless of whether you're using a ladder, maintenance stand, forklift, or k-loader, you never know when the black marble will be next.