‘It is my understanding that construction work is more dangerous that either police of firemen. Does anyone know if this statistic is still true. Yet we always hear about the dangerous work of police and firemen.’
There are hundreds of thousands of us who work in the power and semiconductor businesses where plant buildings have the highest ratings for chemical, fire, and health hazards. There have been deaths by electrocution. Folks have died by entering closed spaces which have filled with pure nitrogen.
I worked on the third floor of a building whose second floor contained all high voltage electrical transformers and piping for silane gas, phosphorous, arsenic, boron, chlorine, and many others. We all took a risk by going to work every day.
However, our safety record improved continuously and not at the expense of freedoms. Good engineering design and training eliminated hazards.
I think lack of training and procedures which give these city workers an easy way out is part of the problem.
We didn’t get any higher pay for working in these places. No such thing as hazard or combat pay.
We also had our own hazmat and security. They were better qualified to work in these buildings because they had the training, knowledge of the hazards, and were local and responded ASAP. They were our coworkers who were cross-trained.
That's how T.I. built their semiconductor plants in Dallas and Houston, years ago. I worked in a CAD development department on the first floor where they had lucite 'hats' for the computer racks because the computers had previously been destroyed by burst pipes in the ceiling, serving the second floor (support level) and third floor (semiconductor production level).