My latest unfortunate mishap.
So I'm at work. I'm an IT director working in a newly (2 years) renovated class A building. Our offices are really nice. The printer/supply room is right across the hall from my office. I printed a document and walked across the hall to print it. We have to swipe our badge on the printer and then release any print jobs we've sent, so I had to wait for the job to print. While waiting I looked at the supply cabinets and thought "I need another legal pad" so I stepped towards the supply cabinet and opened the door. There were no legal pads in the door I opened so I started to close it and then it happened.
I work for an engineering and construction company. A large one, +$2 billion in revenue. Safety is a big thing. We do dangerous things: build pipelines, erect transmission towers, retool refineries, etc. One of our metrics is TRIR, or Total Reported Incident Rate (i.e. the number of reported injury incidents divided by 208,000 man hours or per 100 employees per year). This is not just lost time accidents, but anything needing to be reported, even if it only required an eye wash from a chemical splash. Our goal is to be < 1.0. We are around 1.1 We have been as high at 2.0 in the past and made a major push to be a safe place to work.
Working at corporate is supposed to be safe. Paper cuts are not reportable. But today we had a recordable incident. Back to the storage cabinets.
The cabinets are hung on the wall above a counter. The bottom of the cabinet is at about 5 ft (or 2 ft above the counter. The cabinet is a single structure made of 3/4 inch particle board covered in formica. The cabinet is about 3 ft tall and 2 ft deep and 15 ft long. I guess empty it weighs about 350-400 lbs. Stocked it was probably 500 lbs or more. The cabinet is premade then attached to the wall. The attachment is done by first securing a 1x4 stringer board across the wall secured to each wall studs, which are metal. The cabinet has a lip at the top that sits on the "ledge" of the 1x4 stringer and is then screwed into the stringer in many locations. Pretty secure.
So as I'm closing the cabinet door I got a slight disoriented feeling then realized I'm not moving, the cabinet is moving! I tried to move back out of the way but was trapped between the counter and the copier. The open door of the cabinet came smashing into my face shoving me towards the floor as my arms reached up to try and catch the 500 lb object descending on me. The object would not be stopped by me. My head goes back into the side of the copier as the rest of my body is slammed to the floor.
I make a slight "argh" sound as I looked down and away from the mass that has just smashed against my face, all while my hands are still up holding the cabinet from coming down on me further. It was stopped by the counter, the copier, and the walls from dropping completely to the ground and crushing me. I had about 3 ft of room from the floor to the face of the cabinet which rested directly above my body. As I'm looking down I see blood, lot of it. I cry out louder and immediately there are people in there holding the cabinet from further descent, getting wet paper towels and ice and comforting me. The Florence Nightingale came out of several ladies. I heard one say "Here are some alcohol wipes." I thought "Dear God, please let them have more sense than that." The others did.
So they call 911, I get to ride in the ambulance to the hospital (no siren
), get a CT scan on my skull and eye. Thankfully all clear. I will be bruised and sore for a while but at this point nothing worse than some facial cuts and contusion. My neck will be sore tomorrow, I can tell. And so will some other muscles. And I will learn to tolerate the stares. Got a lot at the hospital.So come to find out, the cabinet was hung on the stringer but never secured by screws. For two years is sat on that 3/4 inch ledge secured only by gravity and friction. After my incident they checked every other such cabinet in the office, probably 4 or so on each of the 5 floors. Most if not all the others were not secured either, except, get this, a few that someone noticed sometime over the years were wobbly and needed securing. So they secured those not thinking "maybe there are others".
Me in the emergency room after my CT scan
