Posted on 05/14/2003 9:00:36 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
A man has fallen from a broadcast tower in Austin from a great height. If anyone has a link to the story, please post it here. He fell more than 600 feet per witness accounts.
Me too -- but after a 600 ft fall, I kinda doubt it.
05/13/03 - 5:30 pmPlunge From Broadcast Tower Kills Man
A man is dead after falling more than 500 feet in west Austin. He was part of a crew working on a television broadcast tower in West Lake Hills.The forest of broadcast towers west of Austin is a familiar sight, each one stands a thousand feet high or more, but they require frequent maintenance. And tower worker is a dangerous job, with death rates ten times the average worker.
Tuesday morning, a four-man crew was installing a microwave unit on a tower located on Buckman Mountain, owned by American Tower Corporation out of Boston. After finishing the job, the workers began their descent. That's when one of the men somehow fell, tumbling about 50 stories to his death.
"Each one of the workers have a harness and safety gear," said Roger Wade with the Travis County Sheriff's Dept. "And so investigators' focus will be on what part of the gear, if any, failed, and what part of the safety procedures failed."
The 35-year-old victim's name and hometown have been withheld until relatives are notified. It's believed that this is the first time a tower worker has died on the job in this area.
I used to climb a bit (really big satellite tracking dishes) but one of these towers? Probably not.
Don't know if they still call themselves "steeplejacks" but that was the term when I was back in college. Met a few of them during a period when a number of "sticks" were dropped to make way for taller towers on the same sites.
Back then, the steeplejacks were paid according to the height of the tower and the complexity of the job. For instance, to change one of the obstruction-marker lamps (flashing red lights), the steeplejack got paid $50 to change the lamp and 10 cents per foot UP and 10 cents per foot DOWN. On a 1500' tower, that would come to $50 for changing the lamp and $300 for going up to do the job and coming back down in one piece. Remember that the steeplejack's risk exposure is just as great on the descent as on the ascent. Perhaps more so.
Of course, I subsequently spent many a year in radio after that, so we always had steeplejacks working on and around our sticks. But not being in Engineering, I rarely had any contact with them.
BTW, one of the reasons you see so many towers these days using Capacitive Discharge Lighting (white "strobes") on them is that their life span is very very long, and seldom need to be changed. The other reason is that they've a lot brighter than conventional incandescent lamps.
Michael
I'm happy here on the ground, thank you.
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