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Darwin Awards
2008 Slush Pile

This item was recently submitted by a reader.
Should I include it in the archive?
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Burners can't fly

2008 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance

Darwin says, "Accepted into the Archive."


ORIGINAL SUBMISSION:

(Port Glasgow, Scotland) Having worked in a shipyard for 12 years you get to see some brilliant darwinians at work, however this one was the best.

Our hero Crawford was what is known as a caulker burner, this involves using a oxy-acetylene blow torch to cut holes through steel bulkheads and decks on various ships.

Now, at the shipyard we had what was known as a plasma cutter, which cut the steel for the boat according to the plans the drawing office sent down prior to being added to the boat.

For smaller holes it would basically cut them out, but for larger holes it would leave sections of steel uncut around the hole to make sure that no-one could fall through them.

Once the steelwork had been positioned on the ship, a caulker burner would then burn through the 6 inch sections, thereby creating a hole in the steel.

Enter our hero.

The job he had been tasked to do was to go onto the ship and cut away these 6 inch sections in order to allow a exhaust pipe to come through the deck. Exhaust pipes can be rather large on ships, and this one was no exception.

Crawford then began his task of burning away the sections, when he sadly discovered that he couldn't fly, you see Crawford decided to stand in the middle of the hole he was burning out, which lead to a rather nasty 15 foot fall onto scaffolding below, escaping with a few broken ribs and a month or so off work. Luckily (for him), neither the blow torch or the large steel plate he had burnt out fell on top of him therefore denying him a glorious Darwin award.

I’m fairly sure that this appeared in the Greenock Telegraph at some point, but as I’m not sure of the date its hard to track down.

Submitted on 03/27/2008

Submitted by: Anonymous
Reference: 1999

Copyright © 2008 DarwinAwards.com

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Chip said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Kind of like sawing off a limb you are sitting on, only this limb was metal and there was fire involved. Thanks for the story of the bird brain with a blowtorch.


Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Sounds like something right out of a cartoon (cutting through a tree branch while standing on the wrong side). I'm amazed that a steelworker would fall (no pun intended) into this situation. Thanks for the story!


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