Attention to Confined Space Training & Gas Monitors Keeps Gaines and Company Crew Safe
This Gaines and Company crew can breathe easy after ingrained confined space training and four gas monitors kept them from entering two manholes with highly combustible gas and low oxygen
(left to right: Rueban Alvarenza, Dave Stigler, Ryan Dawson, Yunior Martinez)
A Gaines and Company punch list crew put their confined space training to the ultimate test last Thursday after detecting high gas and low oxygen levels in two manholes.
Foreman Dave Stigler, Yunior Martinez, Ryan Dawson and Rueban Alvarenza were performing a flushing operation of newly installed utilities at a home site development in Jessup, MD. Following Gaines and Company and OSHA confined space safety protocol, Martinez utilized his Honeywell Max XT four gas monitors to test the air of each manhole before going inside – exactly the way he had been trained by Safety Director Dominic Pope.
“It was actually two different sensors that went off,” says Pope. One was a lower explosive limit which is combustible gasses, and the other being critically low oxygen. “If somebody had entered this space and didn’t use a monitor, they could have possibly died or the work they were completing could have caused a hazard and ignited something,” he says.
With 20-plus manholes to enter that day, these guys weren’t taking any chances, and once again Martinez found a second with the same toxicity levels, something that is pretty unusual. “It’s very uncommon for us to have two of them on the same job,” Pope says adding that just because one is safe doesn’t mean the rest will be, even in an unused facility that has yet to be put into service like the one in Jessup. “There’s many fatalities a year from guys having a mindset of ‘this is new, I don’t need to do anything,’” Pope says, adding “and they are the ones that end up having fatalities.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a total of 136 workers were killed in incidents associated with confined spaces in 2015, a number which has risen in 2016.
Gaines and Company employees must attend mandatory new-hire safety training before beginning work on any jobsite.
Pope cannot stress enough the importance of using gas monitors and sees that the industry may not be paying close enough attention to these life saving devices calling them ‘life insurance’. “The industry tends to be lackadaisical with these gas monitors,” he says “if they don’t use one it’s more than likely somebody’s going to be hurt or killed.” Further, in this dangerous profession, Pope also sees complacency as the enemy of safety. “These guys not getting complacent is what keeps them safe every day,” he says.
After discovering the tainted air, Stigler immediately called Pope to the site where the five then reevaluated, retested and ventilated the spaces, finally deeming them safe to enter.
Crew members are always looking out for one another, both on the jobsite and during training. “If anybody new comes in, Yunior is translating, making sure they understand,” Pope says, “and they go through the National Utility Contractors Association (NUCA) safety video in Spanish if necessary.”
Pope credits this Jessup crew for their diligence and attentiveness to safety, and gave a toolbox talk to employees about that day’s events. “They were able to make the spaces safe to work in with their training and knowledge of confined spaces,” he says, “they were able to recognize the hazard and fix it.”
