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Darwin Awards
2005 Slush Pile

This item was recently submitted by a reader.
Should I include it in the archive?
Vote to tell me what *you* think!

How not to disassemble Scafold

2005 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance

I used to work as an expatriate Aussie at a very large copper and gold mine in Indonesia called the Freeport Grasberg Mine. Now its a well known fact that 3rd world countries do not have the highest safety standards in the world, but Freeport were an American company and had to try to reduce accidents. Unfortunately they came up against the fact that you cannot engineer out stupidity. While I was there they were having some big problems with local Indonesians hurting themselves while working at heights. The solution to this was to have everybody working at a height above 2 meters wearing a safety harness securely attached to an anchor. One of the workers went along with this while he was dismantling some scafolding. He was about 6 meters high when he started this job. he had his harness on and had secured it to an anchor. Once he had removed a piece he just threw it over the side.

Just throwing bits of scafold from six meters high isn't that safe to begin with, but the telling factor with this guy is that he had chosen to anchor himself to the scafolding itself. When he came to the piece he was connected to, he forgot that he was anchored to it when he threw it to the ground 6 meters away. Subsequently he quickly followed the piece of scafold to the ground from 6 meters up. He broke both legs and both arms in the fall and greatly reduced his brain capacity. The funniest thing was a few days later when safety alerts of the incident were put up on notice boards. I couldn't read Indonesian, but the comical, step by step cartoon of a guy throwing himself off some scafolding got the picture across.

Submitted on 11/15/2005

Submitted by: Michael Guy
Reference:

Copyright © 2005 DarwinAwards.com

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>> Moderator Scores <<

Sheryl said:
Definitely Toss: Other
A very similar story earned an Honorable Mention in the 2001 Darwin Awards. A search on "scaffolding" and ticking all the boxes found it easily. Sorry, I can't accept this one.

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
I checked the 2001 HM's and found a story about a vaguely similar incident in Florida ("Tied to his work"), but it is rather brief and nowhere near as amusing as this one! In addition, the victim here apparently got it much worse than the 2001 HM winner. I do not find the two all that similar except for the basic mishap. Unfortunately, there is no news link or other verifyable proof, but I will definitely accept this as a PA! Thanks for submitting...

Greg said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
I'm with James.

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