Tool Box Talk: “Just A Second”

“Just A Second”

One day, Brad was assigned to help senior welder Tracy with some welding assignments at some remote company locations.

After completing one job, a company pumper approached Brad and Tracy and asked them to schedule a repair on pinhole leaks around the fire tube on a well’s two drip tanks.

When the pumper told Tracy he’d inform the supervisor that the leaks would be fixed, Tracy told him not to bother because he was going to take care of it that same day.

Tracy told him that the pumper said that the liquid level was high enough to put out a fire that resulted if they burned through the tank.

Brad checked the atmosphere with his gas monitor at the well, he asked Tracy, “What’s going to keep a spark from getting inside one of those drip tanks?”

Tracy didn’t check the tank’s liquid level and assumed the information the pumper gave them was correct.

“Any time you do something to save a few minutes, and that’s all we had done, we wanted to save just a few minutes by not having to go up to the catwalk. So we didn’t gauge the tanks,” says Brad.

Because there was no grinding or brushing for him to do as a helper, Brad didn’t bother to put on his gloves. He rolled out the leads for Tracy to do his welding.

Tracy finished his weld on the first tank and moved to the second. After speaking briefly with a supervisor, Brad walked toward Tracy, who was lying on the ground welding.

Brad heard a sound in the tank and knew it was going to explode. “I hollered at Tracy, ‘It’s going to blow! And just then, it blew’.”

The explosion that came from the tank threw Brad into the air, through a ball of fire and onto the other tank.

“When I landed there, I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I couldn’t believe that I had just been involved in an explosion at work.

Those things happen to other people, not me,” says Brad.

While Brad’s clothes were on fire and he was engulfed in flames, he was more concerned about his three daughters at home than he was about dying.

When he started moving towards the catwalk to get down off the tank, it also exploded.

“Threw me back up into the air, again I have no idea how I high I went the second time, but this time I landed back on the ground on the opposite side of the tank that I started out from,” Brad says.

Although he was in great shape and had been a distance runner for 18 years, Brad only had the strength to roll three times to get away from the fire.

“The heat had taken all my energy. My left leg was broke and so it would just flop every time I rolled. And all I did was make it to the edge of the flames,” says Brad.

BRAD’S INJURIES & THEIR EFFECT ON HIS FAMILY

As Brad lay there fighting for his life, he wondered what had happened to Tracy. Finally the ambulance arrived, got him loaded and headed to the hospital.

“As soon as we got on the road, I said a prayer and when I said “amen,” that’s the last thing I remember for two and a half months,” says Brad.

About the time he arrived at the hospital, something just about as bad as the explosions started happening, according to Brad. “That is the family.

At the hospital, a physician informed his family that he had suffered third-degree burns over 63 percent of his body.

By adding that number to his age of 32 and subtracting the total from 100, the doctors gave him a five percent chance of surviving.

Bobbi had the nurses wrap his face and head with gauze so the girls couldn’t see what he looked like at that point.

They had the option of coming back and standing next to his bed or stand on the other side of the glass wall and look at him.

While Brandi and Kayla put on their gowns to go back, Sara made the decision, “Since he’s going to die anyway, I don’t want to go back and stand next to him laying on that bed. I don’t want to remember him that way.”

“What was that like for her in fifth grade to make that decision?” Brad asks, “What did that do to her, to have to make that choice?”

BRAD LEARNS TRACY DIDN’T SURVIVE THE EXPLOSIONS

When he would ask about Tracy, Brad says Bobbi would tell him that they hadn’t “heard anything yet.”

Since he still didn’t comprehend that it had been two and half months since the explosion, he would believe her.

Finally, one day Bobbi walked into Brad’s hospital room and told him she thought he was ready for the news. “Tracy’s dead.

He was killed in those explosions,” Brad says Bobbi told her. “Words cannot describe the hollow, helpless feeling that gave me, and it still does to this day, 16 years later,” says Brad.

“I was his helper at work that morning; we were partners on a job, and now he’s dead.”

JUST A SECOND IS ALL IT TAKES TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER

Imagine never being able to engage in your favourite hobby or enjoy vacation, Brad says, because you took a shortcut at work.

“Or you drove a little bit more like a maniac to get two or three minutes ahead of where you needed to be and had an accident.”

“Just a second, just a second, I know a shortcut that can get this done. Just a second ago, this wasn’t broke, now it is,” continues Brad.

“Just a second ago, I was fine and happy and healthy enjoying my job, now I’m laying here fighting for my life.”

“Just a second is all it takes to change your life forever, maybe even end it. Just a second is all it takes for you to raise your hand and say, ‘Wait a minute; I don’t think this is safe.’

Explain to me how we’re going to do what we’re about to do and no one is going to get hurt, no equipment is going to get damaged.

Just a second and it’s totally up to you, individually, every day to make those decisions,” Brad concludes.

Ref: www.eri-safety.com

“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much” – Helen Keller

Thanks for the share, TO!