ROOF SAFETY; DOES NOBODY CARE??

I think this business would do fine without ropes on every job. That's after experiencing several bad accidents in the 90's. No serious ones since.

Drugs were at play. I'm not talking about MJ, talkin bout the hard stuff. Guys will work hard, and my Dad had no idea these guys were doing this because most of the crew was guilty and covering for each other. Two of the guys came back after a bad fall and are still with me today, without their habits. I now know how to spot a problem. It was an epidemic around here, very sad.

Another guy fell, broke his back. Came back after a year or so clean. Fell again, off a stepladder, a few years later. Came back after a couple of years clean again. Then walked out in traffic at night and got seriously hurt. His old lady is going to take him to the scrap yard when his time's up. :lol:

I'd imagine the ropes are making the substance abusers feel the safest, while annoying the rest of us most of the time.

At least the world is better than it used to be, when men were worth less than mules!

Looking back over the last 30 years I can remember 7 accidents where someone fell from the roof that occured on a job site that I had a personal involvement with. Most of which I was just working on a crew for someone else.

Of the 7 falls only one man was seriously injured. One guy suffered a sprained ankle and another a bloody nose.The other 4 were uninjured.

ALL of the incidents involved the young and inexperienced doing things that were unsafe and just outright ridiculous.

There was one serious injury in 30 years and it was discovered that the young man that fell was drunk and high on marijuana.

OSHA has very little to do/impact on practical safety.

Would be interesting to know if OSHA regs may increase accident odds in some cases, &/or overall. i.e., anytime a worker is climbing/working at heights, there is a risk. What about the increased time OSHA regs put on particualr tasks. INOW's; A particualr task may take 30 minutes and can be completed in a safe manner, whereas complying w/OSHA, may expose the worker to twice the time at risk, so-to-speak. Not to mention the added task of safety equipment handling/set-up/tear-down.

You take a co w/100 roofers, that's got to be a calculated ADDED risk factor.

wywoody.....Thanks for tellin-like-it-is.....

egg, its funny you should say that, I was thinking the same thing.

Well, it may be time for a trip down linguistic lane. Per diem is related to carpe diem by the day. Woody might just be annoyed because nobody payed him what they should have to drive that motorcycle through the desert way back in the early diems. The benefits were just uplifting panoramas and self-reliance while building independence and a first-rate mind, day after day. A person can get carpal tunnel syndrome grabbing at small amounts of money on a repetitive basis. Could even happen to you while nailing on shingles though even a four cents a nail, it didn't happen to me. Minimum wage on the other hand, just gives you plain old tunnel syndrome although you could also get carpal tunnel syndrome while you were at it if you happened to be continuously clutching at the walls. Sometimes it seems like we are walled in by the tunnel of days. But one diem does not equal another diem really and hopefully never will. Each day is a unique gift. Carping per diem is not latin-based, per se or even per say. Our rugged old English has accumulated a lot of variety and that one is Scandinavian from karpa (to dispute.) There is benefit from disputation, even sometimes the carping variety. How this shakes out for anyone in particular is not for me to say, only that it is all somehow related and I get a per diem allowance for such things.

Mama is happy again because Estory said he was sorry. Now Estory and WyWoody have got off on the wrong foot. Estory is not vindictive and Wywoody is not a jerk. We've got a lot of passion for our opinions. Now hug it out!

Hi,

I consider myself to be one of the safest roofers out here.I may not wear a harness but I take ALL other precautions. As in the best safety being to not have a fall to begin with whether your tied to a rope or not. I don't want to fall half way to the ground and have my vertebrae snapped in half from the rope catching either.

I always tie my ladder off in a way that will not allow it to slide horizontally or allow the bottom to kick out. Even though I take full advantage of the grip that an old couch cushion provides, I still will not go up a steep sloped roof on a cushion without a secure walk board underneath me just in case.

I have a very good feel for the roof and ultimate respect for it. Which is something I can not say holds true concerning many of the governments rules and regulations.

I am self employed with no employees. OSHA does not posses the ability to give me a citation for anything as long as I am working alone.

If I feel a job would be unsafe for me to do, then I will pass on the invitation to bid altogether. I carry a 24 ft. ladder. If that don't reach with room to spare then it's "Sorry I couldn't help you".

If I hired employees to work for me then all of this would be another story. I could not and would not expect others to be safe on their own free will. Especially younger people. Only other advanced experience roofers can be expected to posses these same qualities and only some of them.

I am a roof repair specialist and could care less about re-roofing a house. If you see me up on the roof doing a repair with no harness on and you decide to call OSHA, tell them to hurry because most likely by the time they get there I will be working on the next one across town.

With all that said I agree 100% that if you are going to put other people in harms way ( which occurs simply by putting them on a roof ) then you need to follow all safety rules and regulations. And also implement many of your own!

Peace! ;)

Mike H,

There's always going to be those unavoidable instances. When it comes to customer negligence, however, do not agree to and make sure your contracts do not read that your company holds the owner's and their representatives harmless for injuries resulting from their incompetence and or negligence.

I saw a situation years ago where the owner did not disclose the proper information about his property and a man got injured to the point of never being able to work again and the owner was clearly negligent, HOWEVER, because the contract read that way (from the General Contractor), This poor guy wasn't able to go after anyone.

I care, and we take great strides to be safe. We've actually won some awards and received some recognitions for our efforts.

But we've had two serious accidents in the last year.

Accident 1: Man appears to have simply blacked out upon stepping on the top rung of the ladder, pitched off backward and fortunately landed on a co-worker, saving his life. He's still pretty messed up, and may never roof again, but he is alive.

Accident 2: A steam line that was supposed to be disabled had a release as a man walked past it. Badly burning him with 2nd degree burns over most of his back, arms and butt crack. He's in amazing spirits, but it will be a good while before he can stand the heat of the sun again. Maybe a year.

No amount of osha, on our part, could have stopped these. However, the customer's part in the steam release could have been very simply avoided.

Ok, First of all, to Vicky the Boss, I was not implying anything bad against this website. I know you would never promote anything unsafe and I apologize if it sounded that way. I am just tired of seeing unsafe practice.

For the jerk saying that I'm vendictive and "Not Real", the reason I don't know if the guy is alive or not, is because I stopped doing business with them. If you want to stick up for unsafe practice guys, it's your call. Why would I call OSHA?? For the BIGGEST reason, if it saves only ONE life, it's worth it.

I'm sorry guys, if I have offended anyone, well then I would assume that you aren't safe. If that's your choice, then so be it. Just don't risk the lives of others. I'm very proud to ensure my guys are safe. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if an individual with a family died because I didn't do MY job.

Safety has nothing to do with OSHA, policy, meetings, handbooks, etc.

I have roofed for 30 years and I have never worn a harness. all of my injuries that have occured to me, no amount of OSHA or meetings could have stopped them.

If you need anything except yourself to tell you whats safe and what isn't, you really shouldn't be on the roof.

I have let people go because they just weren't safe. had nothing to do with something or someone telling me they weren't safe, I could see it.

So true, egg, but we as the gatekeepers must keep an eye on those that enter your sanity, err safety zone.

I care a lot and I always have. I'm not wearing a harness in most cases and I am completely unapologetic about it. My state deviated from that stupid six-foot ruling. I don't go shirtless anymore, but if I wanted to, as I sometimes used to, I would, and would take great comfort in knowing that professionalism is based on many things, general physical and emotional presence being one of them. Smoke my pipe pretty much any time and anywhere I want, though not inside other people's spaces, and I'm unapologetic about that as well.

Circumstances dictate comportment; they always have. The number one dictum to put in company policy is to carefully observe circumstances, which change all the time.

Most people are incapable of doing that, incapable of making adjustments, and incapable of accurately reading most of the things that affect sanity on the jobsite. Sanity is the goal. Sanity is always the goal.

"Safety" or what is now signified by that word, is important as an aspect of sanity, not the other way around.

If Mama aint' happy, aint' nobody happy!

:unsure: