So, are the vines getting removed and killed?
From: dmmoff...@gmail.com
Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2024 1:13 PM
To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group'
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Vines on utility pole growing into power space - safety
questions
Since posting about this on Friday I reviewed OSHA and NESC on this topic and I
find that the execution of the vine removal was done with abundantly more
caution than was actually required, and I’ll stand by that. We did it safely.
We’re not supposed to do it, but not having permission is not the same as doing
it unsafely IMO.
It is a fact that we’re not one of the power company’s authorized tree removal
contractors, so I acted in violation of our pole attachment contract.
It’s also a fact that I acted outside of the chain of command. The director of
my department has chastised me for that. I should have escalated the issue
through him instead of going into cowboy mode.
So I’ve been a bad boy and deserve some consequences, but I didn’t put anyone
in danger. I gratefully accept Steve’s wrist slap.
The initial reaction was exactly what you said. “call the electric co”.
Almost 2 weeks later the vines were still there and we’re still losing fibers
to the squirrels. Incidentally, the guy who was in communication with the
electric co is the same one who declared it a “near miss” safety incident.
Apparently the last thing he heard was that all customers were up, and he was
unaware of the ongoing issues or else he would have expressed more urgency to
the electric co. I don’t know how that happened given that a crew rolled
customers to new fibers 6 times over 2 weeks, and that crew reports to him.
I’m not going to go into any theories, but the situation looks at least as
unflattering for him as it is for me.
-Adam
From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Steve Jones0
Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2024 2:06 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Vines on utility pole growing into power space - safety
questions
I would have had the powerco send their arbor crew to remove the vines
contacting the conductors
The situation has little to no real world risk, but the little part could get
big real quick if the stars aligned.
I would not let my people touch the vines, though I know there is little to no
actual risk of doing so. That little risk belongs with the power company, not
with us or anyone else.
I would probably give you a slap on the wrist, I dont know that it would be a
documented slap, but it would warrant a process review, partially for safety
reasons but primarily for efficiency, the repair should have occurred rather
than workarounds. The biggest problem with this process review outcome is how
uncommon it will be. by the next time it occurs, there is a chance no one will
remember to tell powerco to call abor crew and it will replicate the issue
(where would you put this in an SOP, and how often would you re-train that SOP
section? probably the dont fuck around with powerlines section)
The mentality of its no more dangerous than such and such is dangerous, as
historically such and such has probably killed somebody, our goal is to
minimize injury and zero out deaths. Its expensive to kill an employee and
causes all kinds of production delays
The biggest "near miss" IMHO here is the degradation of safety culture. I work
with power company regularly and safety culture is pervasive. Every time
something unsafe is deemed safe enough to do it lowers the bar of safety. I was
riding with my power company PM the other day and he was talking about just
this. It used to be that anytime there was any near niss, if no one was hurt or
no one saw, then it was frowned upon to tell, this led to higher incidents of
injury and production loss. Theyve since moved to a culture of bringing up any
near miss, however small in the safety meetings to see if a process change is
warranted to eliminate the risk. Overall the labor satisfaction has increased
and the culture of safety exploded, this equates to a more fiscally friendly
use of labor with a byproduct of less injury
We had some vines that had overgrown our facilities power plant (it was an old
hospital so it was a substantial powerhouse with big pole mount transformers)
they needed to do some work, they did the same thing, cut vine bases and
sprayed substantial killitall to let it die out before they came back to do the
work in the powerhouse, but had they had pole work, they would have had the
arbor crew remove the vines.
On Sat, Aug 10, 2024 at 4:31 AM Forrest Christian (List Account)
<li...@packetflux.com> wrote:
Here's my thought:
Some idiot in your organization thought that all power poles were equally
dangerous, and they reacted accordingly.
If that power pole had primary on it, I would feel like the whole safety
meeting as described had a good chance of being justified.
Likewise, if someone didn't know for sure that there wasn't primary on that
pole or didn't know enough to assess the risks then that's another type of
safety issue. (Don't do unless you have enough knowledge to keep yourself
safe.)
But in this case the only meaningful risk was damaging other infrastructure
on that pole while removing the vines, and to a lesser extent a slight shock
hazard but not much more than handling a plugged in extension cord. Neither of
these are safety issues worthy of a "near miss" meeting.
If I was to do a failure analysis here I'd point squarely at lack of training
across the entire organization about this issue and particularly whoever it is
who thought this should be treated as a BFD.
On Fri, Aug 9, 2024, 7:02 PM <dmmoff...@gmail.com> wrote:
Just venting now. The more I think about this the more annoyed I’m getting.
We were going through the meeting agenda including root cause analysis and
so forth. I stopped him at some point and asked what rule was violated. He
responded with rhetorical questions like “if Elco tree trimmers couldn’t remove
the vines why do you think we could?” and similar. He got agitated about it,
and seemed flustered that I didn’t intuitively know that something was wrong
here. I dropped it, and apologized saying I wasn’t asking to be combative, I’m
asking because I don’t know.
On social interactions I can be slow on the uptake so it took me some time
to realize that obviously the true answer to my question was he doesn’t know,
but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. That burned my ass so bad that I
spent several hours this evening digging into NESC and OSHA documents, and now
I am pretty convinced we didn’t do anything dangerous. It’s possible the guys
don’t meet every requirement for OSHA “line-clearance tree trimmers”, but if
not they’re within a hair’s breadth of it. I’m talking like maybe they’ll need
refresh their CPR certification or something, but otherwise they have
everything they need in terms of tools and training to work near a secondary
voltage line.
-Adam
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