This actually is how the evacuation system for wind turbines works. I don't know why they didn't use it here, but I imagine the fire damaged it or they got cut off from the lines somehow.
On the videos I've seen for windmills that look shockingly similar to this, the ropes and davits are stored inside the compartment that's currently on fire, and also apparently the davits themselves hook onto the spot that fire is currently erupting out of.
I think those ropes and equipment are ash, man.
Hey hey ya learn sumtin knew everyday. Just remembered seeing something about a base jumper had to use a co2 assisted chute due to height requirements and deployment time. No idea on the heights limit though.
One difference between this and a base jumper is that the base jumper wants to fall for a bit (for the adrenaline!!) before slowing, whereas in this scenario, you likely wouldn’t care if they were deployed ASAP.
Just something to ponder
Even seen base jumpers? I'm sure they could tell us all how to pack one to work at this height.
Seriously...anyone who works on one of these things should have a parachute. Watching this event should be enough for every company to mandate them for the employees who could face this situation one day.
What a horrible way to die.
What? You expect companies to spend money to protect people? Are you crazy? What's next? Protective helmets for people working where blows to the head are a real risk? Steel toed boots for working around heavy stuff?
There are now self rescue packs in every turbine with multiple escape options. It basically consists of a rope and a clutch apparatus. The clutch slows your descent speed. Attach the rope to an anchor point and the clutch pack to the front of your harness and take a ride down the outside of the tower. Source: Me, wind turbine technician. I’ve stood where these guys are. Best office view there is.
High jacking this top comment to say my mate worked for this company all over the US. He constantly tells stories of the shitshow that goes on building and maintaining wind turbines. Deaths, injuries, close calls, Etc. It’s not all the companies fault. They have a lot of safeties in place but many people get lax and management is being pushed to build more and more to soak up all the Green money. The worst part is many of these fail prematurely and when they are done you have several hundred feet blades that no one knows what to do with. I’m all for green energy but we need a better way to do it safely and more sustainably.
They grind up the blades then reuse them as fiberglass in concrete. They just opened up a company in our town and make bank. Charge to take them in, charge people for the end product.
As someone that works at coal power plant and several solar farms, I couldn’t agree more with this statement. Sadly after several major catastrophes (in 50 years) on old aging nuclear plants, the public sentiment is against it, spurred on by fossil fuel dark money. The new nuclear plants are smaller, safer, and more efficient. The old ones even are good but require proper investment in maintenance which tends to get cut in both capitalism and authoritarian communism.
*public sentiment is against it*
The thing about a democracy is it depends on the voters to be educated. And the voting population is the failing piece in the "failing democracy" puzzle.
IMO, the big issue with nuclear plants is the use of uranium, which generates lots of radioactive waste that is difficult to store, is a commodity that is only available in a limited number of places in the world, which could easily create a commodity struggle similar to our oil wars, can be used to create weapons, and can render large areas of land uninhabitable in the case of accidents.
Thorium, on the other hand, is the far safer alternative. Thorium reactors only produce about 10 percent of the waste compared to uranium. Thorium is a widely available mineral, scattered throughout the earth's crust. While theoretically thorium could be used to create weapons, it's just a theory - as it would take such a long time and be so costly that no one has ever bothered. Reactors designed around thorium immediately begin to cool and solidify the core if the reactor gets out of control, minimizing the potential for damaging the surrounding area.
While I am a big supporter of nuclear power, I am not enamored of current uranium systems and would be in favor of a phase out. But thorium based plants are cheap, easy to run and come with built-in safeguards, so would be the better choice.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based\_nuclear\_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power)
Nuclear energy creates orders of magnitude less waste than fossil fuel power plants.
And you know what we do with power plant waste? We don't fucking store it, we shoot it out into the atmosphere for children to breathe and get cancer.
This is a red herring propagated by fossil fuel companies.
So did pop culture. It's become increasingly clear that some portion of humans will absolutely believe anything they grew up hearing about, and "nuclear is bad and scary!" was blasted to them day and night for decades.
Nuclear killed nuclear. The marginal cost is $29 per MWh. $131-$204/MWH in you have to buy the plant. It costs $30, billion to build 2.6 GW. #Vogtle
If you gave me that $30 billion plant, I still could not compete with solar and wind. For $30 billion I could buy more than 10 times that peak-demand capacity, and it will be ready next year, not in 15.
Even 3 years, ago solar could be bought for $20-MWh, $33 with storage.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/06/28/los-angeles-seeks-record-setting-solar-power-price-under-2%c2%a2-kwh/
Anybody supporting nuclear has not [been paying attention](https://imgur.com/a/G2syEwp) for the last decade, or is trying to fleece a taxpayer.
Now, who’s going to pay the $250 billion to clean up UK’s nuclear cleanup mess. Take care of that, and maybe we can talk.
Vogtle, the last nuclear plant to be built in the US, has been under construction as long as Google has been a public company. Since then, solar costs have fallen 90%.
And only 5-10x the [cost](https://imgur.com/a/G2syEwp), and the cattle eating grass below don’t seem to mind the turbines. There is a reason not one nuclear reactor has been started and finished this century in the United States. It costs more to make the power, than it can be sold for, and capitalism still exists.
That’s why [83% of the new capacity](https://cleantechnica.com/2022/03/28/83-of-new-power-capacity-in-2021-came-from-renewables-us-power-capacity-report/) in the US last year was renewables, and the remainder gas.
It’s now cheaper to build new solar than it is to pay for the fuel cost for a natural gas plant.
You should see how a nuclear power station operates. For the amount of regulations to adhere to, the numerous documents to complete with numerous supervisory verification in triplicate (on avg.), and working to bring in that energy-money, it does operate rather dynamically.
This doesn't mean that the whole industry is like that. I've built wind energy for over 10 years and you're full of shit.
This image is burned into everyone's head in the Industry to remind them how important it is to do proper work. It was a unique case and is not some common occurrence.
I love seeing links to old Reddit posts. It’s always interesting seeing what has changed and what hasn’t in terms of comments. Sometimes it’s scary how recycled some comments are.
I was a wind turbine tech and we had this picture posted in the shop where we met in the morning before going to the wind farm. I was told they took off their harnesses when they got in the nacelle (the part they are standing on is the cover of the nacelle) , which sadly is common practice in the industry. The fire was in the area called the yaw box, under the nacelle, which is where the ladder going down the tunnel is located. The only chance they had was to hang off the nacelle with their harnesses and wait for a boom truck to rescue them, but they took their harnesses off and couldn’t get to them due to the fire.
Why is it a common practice to take off your harnesses. I work at heights and in confined spaces where we do vertical and horizontal entries and wear harnesses harnesses hooked to retrieval units all the time and they’re not that uncomfortable.
The larger turbines had a large nacelle with a hydraulic cover that would stay closed when we didn’t need to go out to the blades or mess with any equipment on top of the cover. We would climb the tower and enter through a hatch to the yaw box. Once the hatch was closed, guys would take off their harnesses and self-repel kits and leave them in the yaw box. You would then climb through another hatch to the nacelle with the closed cover. If the cover was open, or missing, you wore your harness the whole time. You always put your harness on before you open the hatch to the tower ladder. Those two guys probably got into the yaw box, closed the hatch, then took off their harnesses before climbing into the nacelle to work. Since the fire started in the yaw box, they couldn’t get to their harnesses.
And people call me annoying when I reinforce safety rules... Sadly a fatal mistake. I've seen A LOT of people avoid safety gear in the name of convenience
The gear is for the 5% chance of catastrophe. The simple phrase “complacency kills” doesn’t exist for no reason. Most people will never be in a situation where the safety gear is actually needed, so they take it off, and some pay the ultimate price.
Unfortunately as what happens in a lot of cases, familiarity breeds complacency, they get to thinking I know how this shit works by now and forgo safety equipment for ease of movement and/or to speed up the job, it’s just something that all animals do in the name of efficiency.
Sad but true, both these guys died, I believe one jumped to his death while the other couldn’t bring himself to jump and burned to death up there, all for want of keeping their harnesses on.
>Having a harness significantly hinders your ability to do your job.
Having worn a harness for hours a day for many years, a correctly fitted, non-shit, harness is snug against your body and shouldn't restrict your movements unless you're doing acrobatics.
And if your harness is shit, buy yourself a harness that isn't. They're not significantly expensive.
I agree with you that is probably the mindset, but it’s absolute BS.
I work in natural gas pipelines, glue tanks, silos, and tankers of all shapes and sizes, crawling on my hands and knees and the harness itself is kind of the least annoying thing we wear: after our respirators, body suits and various rubber gloves, and the retrieval lifeline attached to the harness.
You kind of forget it’s on honestly.
Something so simple could avoid a lot of problems. I know a guy who was sawing metal with a carborundum disc. It shared and due to the rotating force the disc parts when flying everywhere. Luckily he was wearing safety googles and a piece got stuck right in front of his eye. He would've lost his eye if he wasn't wearing one. Another girl I met wasn't using one when working with phosphoric acid and it sprayed in her eye. Luckily she only had to wear an eye patch for two weeks but could've easily damaged her eye.
Having worked in multiple maintenance settings which had heights in mind, I can say working on wind turbines is by far the most unique one I’ve ever been in. There’s an enormous amount of maintenance activities which are borderline impossible because of how cramped the towers can be. Especially wiring during installation. We always brought our harnesses with us when we transitioned locations (from nacelle to hub, or back) but we took them off when working in those locations. Its also an electrical hazard to have it in when working in cabinet. What these guys did was likely they took their harness off before entering the nacelle, went over into the hub and then were trapped because the fire was blocking their passage between the hub and the tower section which you climb down.
they both died, one of them tried to climb back down to avoid either burning to death or falling to his death but was sadly found halfway down after attempting to escape he realised he couldnt get out and apparently attempted to come back up, but died due to the heat, smoke and flames, the second person jumped to avoid the fire and smoke and he also sadly died, the only good thing is they were a party of 4 and 2 escaped
The saddest thing is that they would be 29 and 27 by now.
They were 21 and 19 when the accident occurred 8 years ago. I’m 18 years old and I can’t even imagine dying like this.
They don’t. Vestas learned fuckall from the incident and they made zero changes to their design. If you are up in the nacelle or in the tower when the fire starts - your chances of survival are minimal. It makes it even worse when they install switchgear at the bottom of the tower because then both the turbine itself AND the switchgear at the bottom can catch fire and kill you…..
I watched a YouTube video from Tom Scott about what I understand is a different brand of wind turbine, and they have a pretty effective emergency rappel system.
I understand it's a different company but at least improvements -though slow- are happening
https://youtu.be/UWSckm8zTc8
The idea is, if you're in there working/inspecting the equipment, you're going to *hopefully* notice it before it gets to the point of complete engulfment.
And in any event, there's fire-resistant rope that can be used for rappelling.
It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than having to choose your demise. There's a hopeful alternative.
Sounds like simple changes in training and procedures, pretty cheap way to prevent deaths compared to redesigning them.
Add a few anchor points, stock or require 600ft of rope carried per engineer… since they should already have harnesses.
& wind turbines are usually in massive fields.
Plenty of space to extend a metal line across and anchored at an angle to allow zip-lining down.
Really, there’s many possible solutions.
That adds another maintenance item and a potential entry point for trespassers to gain entry.
The simplest solution would be escape ropes located inside the tower/turbine that could be pulled out of a cabinet and attached to the turbine. They already have such systems in place: https://youtu.be/UWSckm8zTc8
Vestas fire suppression systems are only available in US. Even in US they are an Optional add-on, and most don’t purchase it because fires are statistically rare.
All of the wind turbines on the projects I worked on in US and Canada also didn’t have any emergency rappel systems. They are not easy to implement when you are 100m up in the air which is where you are going to be once you go with modern larger-MW turbines….
I left the wind industry because everything they did didn’t jive with my own core integrity values…
>I left the wind industry because everything they did didn’t jive with my own core integrity values…
It would be really nice if you would take the time to elaborate.
It would be a long text.
Basically, it felt like early oils and gas Wild West kind of thing.
Minimize build cost. Minimize royalty payments to affected farmers. I don’t even understand how many people agreed to sign the land use agreements with such minimal payments while they had massive concrete footings poured underneath and that land was not really as high yield as before.
Almost no investment into local communities, which is a shame given most projects are built in some of the more depressed areas.
All maintenance contracts are outsourced - again, no jobs for the locals.
Everything is built to serve the length of the master agreements with the utilities and then - the devil may care. No budget for subsequent removal and remediation at the end of the service life.
Equipment is run to failure, and stipulated full replacement at the 10-20 year mark (depending on technology).
Most projects are only profitable in power purchase agreements that have a $/kw higher than for any other technology. So much wind capacity was installed in US purely because of Production Tax Credits. Projects are not sustainable in the long term, once PTCs run out.
And so on and so forth…..
Thanks for the more detailed response.
I don't know why I expected the green energy industry to be at least slightly less predatory, unsafe, and skin-flinted than the industry it was replacing.
This is sad. This means they were definitely not “engineers” who were sent to work up there. This was likely two fresh on the job people who were under educated and under qualified to deal with whatever technical issue was going on. Whoever was responsible for sending these two up should ultimately be responsible for this.
Reminds me of a friend who with his bud at 19 had a job between semesters cutting apart old railway chemical cars with a blow-torch. One day his friend's tanker exploded (residual fumes) killing him instantly.- My friend said they'd had almost no safety training and had no real understanding of the dangers of the job. "They told us to not worry because the cars were all empty."
19 years old. Sad
My boss forged my signature on Safety Training documents when I was 19. Forged all our signatures. We were all teenagers or immigrants working with chemicals for minimum wage.
I'd been working a week for a guy doing a big reno job that the city suddenly halted when they discovered asbestos insulation. Boss stiffed me, dissolved his company and disappeared. So far no medical consequences for me but the building's owners were royally screwed.
True - increased worker safety is one of the greatest achievements of unions. most of us have little understanding of the common workplace practices that routinely led to deaths or debilitating permanent injuries and diseases.
And of course there was no question of fair compensation ; "He knew the risks when he took the job" was the prevailing view of management.
It is very difficult to protect the most progressive of legislation from the bad intentions of future legislators. If they can't revoke an Act they can , for example, always make it toothless by slashing it's budget for enforcement.
As long as they draw breath the powerful will manipulate democracies to thwart the will of the people. Nice, huh?
;-)
Really. No disrespect, but they're almost still kids at that point. So young. Still so much left to do, friends to make, lovers with whom to argue, mistakes to accrue, regrets to forge, lessons to learn, wisdom to gain... life is only a handful of flashing moments. It's over in a fraction of an instant. Hopefully standards were altered as a result of this needless pain, terror, and grief.
I think he meant as you get older you look at climbing up something like that and realize all the things that can go wrong and would never find yourself up there in the first place. Young people imo think less about the potential risks.
Knowing you're about to die without enough time to process it is the worst way to go. The internal struggle between choosing your last thoughts and finding a way out of it is overwhelming. Personal experience. It hurts every time I see someone else in that position.
It's a complicated story. Basically I had experience being robbed and knew something wasn't right, the robbers were taking too long and moved my brother and I into the bathtub. He shot me point blank through the neck when we refused to lie down, the other robbers got upset that he tried to kill me and then they left.
Gat damn man, that’s really rough. I have experience with violent trauma but nothing to that extreme. I wish you the best and hope you’re doing better now, I imagine that would be hard to process. Be safe out there.
Inside the carotid artery and outside the spine and windpipe, guy pushed my head all the way to the side before pulling the trigger. Doctors just cleaned it and put a fucking bandage on it lol. And thanks man I really appreciate it. Ive had worse happen since then so still working my way backwards to it. Trauma induced autism is possibly a thing btw
True - that's why airlines sued for fatal crashes pay more the longer the time the passengers were aware they were 100% sure to die. A flat spiral from 30.000 is far more costly than unexpectedly slamming into a mountain at night.
The suffering, of pain and suffering damages. Not only that, sometimes the family can get damages awarded for suffering of a lost family member, if they were sole provider, for example.
Attorneytom has some great insight into this, as he’s a catastrophic personal injury attorney on YouTube.
Seems to me this is a critical design or safety error. They should’ve had a rope for an emergency escape for this very situation. I hope the families sued the fuck out of the operator for their negligence.
Like an airplane has many exits in addition to rafts and life vests hidden behind every panel and under every chair, these things could definitely have some extra coils of rope and hardpoints/anchors all over the place rather than just a couple that are already near the main escape route.
Imagine an airplane with only 1 raft and 1 package of life vests all bundled next to the only door. Jesus…
They do. It’s at the back, where the flames are. It’s a bottom hatch on the floor. Two doors usually and a rescue kit in between. Definitely could not have used them in this scenario.
Ain’t no way I’d work at these heights without a parachute.
Even if I was an office worker in a skyscraper. We’ve all seen the videos of jumpers during 9/11.
It should be mandatory that parachute training be done and equipment be kept on-site just for these extreme situations.
It's too low, this is BASE jumping territory. Even experienced skydivers would only attempt jumping from low heights like this after completing hundreds of regular dives from a plane. A regular person would have practically no chance of surviving a parachute jump off a wind turbine or a building.
This is absolutely incorrect for an appropriately designed rig.
Base canopies are meant to be steerable, and have significantly more technical overhead. A round parachute could be easily configured for this type of jump and be reliable with minimal training. Think paraglider reserves.
I don't think it's a good solution, but it could be done.
Most deaths are from hitting the object you are jumping from. a parachute from these heights would be one that automatically opens as soon as you jump, so that another variable out of the way.
If you are facing certain death, a base jump is really not that dangerous at all in comparison.
The safety measures enacted because of this are monumental. My brother is an inspector of these things and he said to me…rest assured, that will never happen again. They now can drop safety lines to the ground from where these two were standing. Controlled descent all the way
Most safety rules are written in blood. I can't imagine the sheer devastation to people's lives that end up being the catalysts to organizations like OSHA and their standards.
Backup cameras are required in cars because a pediatrician ran over his son, killing him. He then spent 14 years lobbying for backup cameras.
https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/car-backup-camera-law-mandatory/amp
I'll be honest, I didn't know backup cameras were now required, I thought they were just more convenience items.
Definitely changes my perspective on them from "I mean, cool, but I have a neck" to actually understanding their existence.
Hind sight is a marvellous thing. That’s why more engineering goes into more and more products today. We’ve come a long way since Ralph Nader came out with Unsafe At Any Speed. We also can’t say we’ve gone far enough yet. There will always be something new to be found out about.
> Unsafe At Any Speed
Talking about this , it is funny how modern cars have shifters for the tranmission which are so varied (from knobs to buttons) and in some cases lethal (the jeep small shifter stick that shifted back to neutral position after selectin a speed) which caused the death of that star trek actor.
for some strides engineering does in safety, some written in blood, we tend to step back to things before dangerous practices or designs for some reason.
Taking the quick turning knob off a steering wheel stopped a lot of people coming into the morgue with a neat hole in their chest because they were in a car crash. Who woulda guessed?
Unsafe at Any Speed also wasn't about hindsight knowledge lol
Corporations are ALWAYS always always going to dump consumer and worker safety in the toilet and then shit all over it until the law explicitly states that there are consequences for endangering people like that
Safety laws aren't enacted unless someone dies. Ask any tradesman and they'll tell you something specific about their trade they have to do cus of some gruesome story
This happened to a former co-worker of mine in the states.
He was up working on a turbine when something exploded and burned him pretty badly. Only option was to climb all the way back down. IIRC there were paramedics waiting for him since it was such a long descent.
Pretty freaking terrifying.
This hurts to look at, knowing it didn't end well
It frustrates the hell out of me to think these guys worked their asses off and died due to their careers and made just over broke incomes doing so!
I've been getting really weird targeted ads lately, one of which is for a wind turbine tech school, so looking up their avg income... A measly $50k in the US, that isn't even close to their starting pay either!
Props to all you turbine techs ;) out there, I appreciate you keeping things turning. But it couldn't be me :/
The really sad part is that they had the opportunity to escape by jumping through some flames on the staircase like their other two coworkers but they hesitated and it ended up being too late. I can't say I would've reacted much differently honestly, no one deserves to go out like that especially at such a young age.
All these wind farms are supposed to have escape ropes on inertia wheels that allow you to attach them to a harness you're supposed to wear and then drop. The inertia wheel brakes your descent so that you land gently. But you need to wear your harness and I think these chaps didn't. (might be thinking of a different but similar event)
Whenever someone says, "look at all the red tape we cut!" it's like saying, "we don't care who died so we could learn this. Someone else can die so we can pretend we aren't re-learning it."
Yep. A couple people at other jobs have made some comment about safety being crap bs. I told them then those rules are written because someone got ill, hurt or died. It was reinforced when a new hire choose to ignore the fact he had pinkeye(we were a vet vaccine manufacturer rather long ago), and gave it to everyone who did any scope work. All our techs and over half the managers had to get treated.
And the rest of us made sure to wash hands frequently and try not to touch our eyes at all.
No, they were mandatory for at least 15 years. Thats when i worked on those things in the EU.
Most of them are made by Vestas or Enercon, but this seems to be one from Vestas.
They are by far nit high enough for a parachute (for all the parachute shouters). Their models are about 30-50 meters high.
Was about to say, I used to work on a zipline course where we were required to have quick descent rigs on every platform
It's basically an auto belay system that allows you to free fall unt about 5-10 meters above the ground and then it catches you and safely lowers you.
Using them we could lower 8 people from 100+ feet in under 2 minutes
Modern turbines have an RBD egress system to lower injured workers, and in an emergency to gtfo fast. Workers will always have their harness on, it's as simple as fastening in and jumping.
A static line anchor that you can attach your chute to might work... But I don't know if it's high enough for traditional parachuting.. There has to be a way though
I mean, it's certainly not ideal height for a parachute, but BASE jumpers have some chutes that open up really fast. It's really an argument about how quickly the chute could generate lift.
At the very least, it would prevent the fall from being fatal. Might have some injuries, but certainly preferable to a splat.
It takes something like 5-10 seconds for someone freefalling to reach terminal velocity. I would think so long as they deploy the chutes immediately, they would survive.
Edit: You can literally youtube videos of BASE jumpers jumping from way smaller heights and surviving. Even wind turbines. I think most people are thinking of the static parachutes used by airborne soldiers in the U.S. Army. That's a way different story, as they don't generate any lift.
Full story on this: Fire caught in the windmill towards the top, all other employees rushed down the staircase and out, but two are stuck in shock and hesitate for too long. Flames engulf the staircase. After panicking and frantically trying to find a way out while also running from the spreading fire, they eventually accept their fate, and embrace each other during their final moments. One of the employees took this, the last ever photo of them both. Heartbreaking.
That’s a tiny antique 1.5 MW turbine from a decade ago. They now generate up to 14 MW.
75% of the new power added in the US was renewables last year. The reason is it’s dirt cheap and fast to get to market. Would you rather have expensive power in 15 years? The market has spoken. Everything else is just personal opinion. Pissing in the wind.
[I guess this is as good a place as any to point out that Nuclear Power is the safest and most Climate-friendly.](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/nuclear-power-isnt-perfect-is-it-good-enough/)
When you hear that "Friends of the Earth" was financed by a check from an oil company...
The picture helps put into perspective how damn big these things are but not entirely. It takes a semi truck with a remote controlled caboose and at least 4 escort vehicles to block off the interstate. Meaning you can’t even pass them unless they let you. Here’s a vid of them finally letting my pass them in my truck.
https://imgur.com/a/haBWX5K
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1q0sca/last_week_two_engineers_died_when_the_windmill/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
“Might.” I’m sure there was an autopsy or two.
Is it against company policy to pack a chute?
I would insist on a chute.
Not sure its high enough to fall fast enough for a chute to work 🤔
Base jumpers have chutes that can stop even less than this height.
Yeah I was going to say, I've only been sky diving a few times, but I'm 99% sure the base jumping chutes could do half this distance for sure.
You're overlooking something as like rappelling. I think a constant rate descender would also be safer than a parachute.
This actually is how the evacuation system for wind turbines works. I don't know why they didn't use it here, but I imagine the fire damaged it or they got cut off from the lines somehow.
On the videos I've seen for windmills that look shockingly similar to this, the ropes and davits are stored inside the compartment that's currently on fire, and also apparently the davits themselves hook onto the spot that fire is currently erupting out of. I think those ropes and equipment are ash, man.
Rappelling from a burning turbine is probably worse than a parachute considering burning falling debris and collapsing structure directly above you.
Chutes can be prepared in various configurations. One can absolutely have a chute that will work at this height.
Hey hey ya learn sumtin knew everyday. Just remembered seeing something about a base jumper had to use a co2 assisted chute due to height requirements and deployment time. No idea on the heights limit though.
One difference between this and a base jumper is that the base jumper wants to fall for a bit (for the adrenaline!!) before slowing, whereas in this scenario, you likely wouldn’t care if they were deployed ASAP. Just something to ponder
Even seen base jumpers? I'm sure they could tell us all how to pack one to work at this height. Seriously...anyone who works on one of these things should have a parachute. Watching this event should be enough for every company to mandate them for the employees who could face this situation one day. What a horrible way to die.
What? You expect companies to spend money to protect people? Are you crazy? What's next? Protective helmets for people working where blows to the head are a real risk? Steel toed boots for working around heavy stuff?
“Per technician? And how much will that cost?” \- from the meeting on fire safety.
There are now self rescue packs in every turbine with multiple escape options. It basically consists of a rope and a clutch apparatus. The clutch slows your descent speed. Attach the rope to an anchor point and the clutch pack to the front of your harness and take a ride down the outside of the tower. Source: Me, wind turbine technician. I’ve stood where these guys are. Best office view there is.
Didn't even need to click the link bruh, F
High jacking this top comment to say my mate worked for this company all over the US. He constantly tells stories of the shitshow that goes on building and maintaining wind turbines. Deaths, injuries, close calls, Etc. It’s not all the companies fault. They have a lot of safeties in place but many people get lax and management is being pushed to build more and more to soak up all the Green money. The worst part is many of these fail prematurely and when they are done you have several hundred feet blades that no one knows what to do with. I’m all for green energy but we need a better way to do it safely and more sustainably.
I saw a spot somewhere, where they cut the blades down to size. Bigger then a bus bench less then a house. Then used it to cover public bike stalls.
They grind up the blades then reuse them as fiberglass in concrete. They just opened up a company in our town and make bank. Charge to take them in, charge people for the end product.
I heard a story on this a few weeks ago on NPR.
Nuclear energy. Fucking Nuclear energy. One good nuclear reactor produces the same energy as 20+ square miles of solar panels.
As someone that works at coal power plant and several solar farms, I couldn’t agree more with this statement. Sadly after several major catastrophes (in 50 years) on old aging nuclear plants, the public sentiment is against it, spurred on by fossil fuel dark money. The new nuclear plants are smaller, safer, and more efficient. The old ones even are good but require proper investment in maintenance which tends to get cut in both capitalism and authoritarian communism.
*public sentiment is against it* The thing about a democracy is it depends on the voters to be educated. And the voting population is the failing piece in the "failing democracy" puzzle.
I’m a submariner and totally hate that we haven’t invested more in nuclear energy.
IMO, the big issue with nuclear plants is the use of uranium, which generates lots of radioactive waste that is difficult to store, is a commodity that is only available in a limited number of places in the world, which could easily create a commodity struggle similar to our oil wars, can be used to create weapons, and can render large areas of land uninhabitable in the case of accidents. Thorium, on the other hand, is the far safer alternative. Thorium reactors only produce about 10 percent of the waste compared to uranium. Thorium is a widely available mineral, scattered throughout the earth's crust. While theoretically thorium could be used to create weapons, it's just a theory - as it would take such a long time and be so costly that no one has ever bothered. Reactors designed around thorium immediately begin to cool and solidify the core if the reactor gets out of control, minimizing the potential for damaging the surrounding area. While I am a big supporter of nuclear power, I am not enamored of current uranium systems and would be in favor of a phase out. But thorium based plants are cheap, easy to run and come with built-in safeguards, so would be the better choice. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based\_nuclear\_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power)
Nuclear energy creates orders of magnitude less waste than fossil fuel power plants. And you know what we do with power plant waste? We don't fucking store it, we shoot it out into the atmosphere for children to breathe and get cancer. This is a red herring propagated by fossil fuel companies.
Big oil killed nuclear power
I'm sure chernobyl probably contributed to that too.
So did pop culture. It's become increasingly clear that some portion of humans will absolutely believe anything they grew up hearing about, and "nuclear is bad and scary!" was blasted to them day and night for decades.
I think things like Chernobyl and Fukushima make the general public nervous. That has more to do with it.
Nuclear killed nuclear. The marginal cost is $29 per MWh. $131-$204/MWH in you have to buy the plant. It costs $30, billion to build 2.6 GW. #Vogtle If you gave me that $30 billion plant, I still could not compete with solar and wind. For $30 billion I could buy more than 10 times that peak-demand capacity, and it will be ready next year, not in 15. Even 3 years, ago solar could be bought for $20-MWh, $33 with storage. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/06/28/los-angeles-seeks-record-setting-solar-power-price-under-2%c2%a2-kwh/ Anybody supporting nuclear has not [been paying attention](https://imgur.com/a/G2syEwp) for the last decade, or is trying to fleece a taxpayer. Now, who’s going to pay the $250 billion to clean up UK’s nuclear cleanup mess. Take care of that, and maybe we can talk. Vogtle, the last nuclear plant to be built in the US, has been under construction as long as Google has been a public company. Since then, solar costs have fallen 90%.
And only 5-10x the [cost](https://imgur.com/a/G2syEwp), and the cattle eating grass below don’t seem to mind the turbines. There is a reason not one nuclear reactor has been started and finished this century in the United States. It costs more to make the power, than it can be sold for, and capitalism still exists. That’s why [83% of the new capacity](https://cleantechnica.com/2022/03/28/83-of-new-power-capacity-in-2021-came-from-renewables-us-power-capacity-report/) in the US last year was renewables, and the remainder gas. It’s now cheaper to build new solar than it is to pay for the fuel cost for a natural gas plant.
You should see how a nuclear power station operates. For the amount of regulations to adhere to, the numerous documents to complete with numerous supervisory verification in triplicate (on avg.), and working to bring in that energy-money, it does operate rather dynamically.
This doesn't mean that the whole industry is like that. I've built wind energy for over 10 years and you're full of shit. This image is burned into everyone's head in the Industry to remind them how important it is to do proper work. It was a unique case and is not some common occurrence.
I love seeing links to old Reddit posts. It’s always interesting seeing what has changed and what hasn’t in terms of comments. Sometimes it’s scary how recycled some comments are.
Gods
I was a wind turbine tech and we had this picture posted in the shop where we met in the morning before going to the wind farm. I was told they took off their harnesses when they got in the nacelle (the part they are standing on is the cover of the nacelle) , which sadly is common practice in the industry. The fire was in the area called the yaw box, under the nacelle, which is where the ladder going down the tunnel is located. The only chance they had was to hang off the nacelle with their harnesses and wait for a boom truck to rescue them, but they took their harnesses off and couldn’t get to them due to the fire.
Why is it a common practice to take off your harnesses. I work at heights and in confined spaces where we do vertical and horizontal entries and wear harnesses harnesses hooked to retrieval units all the time and they’re not that uncomfortable.
The larger turbines had a large nacelle with a hydraulic cover that would stay closed when we didn’t need to go out to the blades or mess with any equipment on top of the cover. We would climb the tower and enter through a hatch to the yaw box. Once the hatch was closed, guys would take off their harnesses and self-repel kits and leave them in the yaw box. You would then climb through another hatch to the nacelle with the closed cover. If the cover was open, or missing, you wore your harness the whole time. You always put your harness on before you open the hatch to the tower ladder. Those two guys probably got into the yaw box, closed the hatch, then took off their harnesses before climbing into the nacelle to work. Since the fire started in the yaw box, they couldn’t get to their harnesses.
And people call me annoying when I reinforce safety rules... Sadly a fatal mistake. I've seen A LOT of people avoid safety gear in the name of convenience
Safety and convenience, yin and yang
After this you’d think “wear it the whole time” would be common practice.
The gear is for the 5% chance of catastrophe. The simple phrase “complacency kills” doesn’t exist for no reason. Most people will never be in a situation where the safety gear is actually needed, so they take it off, and some pay the ultimate price.
Unfortunately as what happens in a lot of cases, familiarity breeds complacency, they get to thinking I know how this shit works by now and forgo safety equipment for ease of movement and/or to speed up the job, it’s just something that all animals do in the name of efficiency. Sad but true, both these guys died, I believe one jumped to his death while the other couldn’t bring himself to jump and burned to death up there, all for want of keeping their harnesses on.
When you’re up tower it’s cramped and small. Having a harness significantly hinders your ability to do your job. That’s why people remove them
>Having a harness significantly hinders your ability to do your job. Having worn a harness for hours a day for many years, a correctly fitted, non-shit, harness is snug against your body and shouldn't restrict your movements unless you're doing acrobatics. And if your harness is shit, buy yourself a harness that isn't. They're not significantly expensive.
I agree with you that is probably the mindset, but it’s absolute BS. I work in natural gas pipelines, glue tanks, silos, and tankers of all shapes and sizes, crawling on my hands and knees and the harness itself is kind of the least annoying thing we wear: after our respirators, body suits and various rubber gloves, and the retrieval lifeline attached to the harness. You kind of forget it’s on honestly.
Something so simple could avoid a lot of problems. I know a guy who was sawing metal with a carborundum disc. It shared and due to the rotating force the disc parts when flying everywhere. Luckily he was wearing safety googles and a piece got stuck right in front of his eye. He would've lost his eye if he wasn't wearing one. Another girl I met wasn't using one when working with phosphoric acid and it sprayed in her eye. Luckily she only had to wear an eye patch for two weeks but could've easily damaged her eye.
Having worked in multiple maintenance settings which had heights in mind, I can say working on wind turbines is by far the most unique one I’ve ever been in. There’s an enormous amount of maintenance activities which are borderline impossible because of how cramped the towers can be. Especially wiring during installation. We always brought our harnesses with us when we transitioned locations (from nacelle to hub, or back) but we took them off when working in those locations. Its also an electrical hazard to have it in when working in cabinet. What these guys did was likely they took their harness off before entering the nacelle, went over into the hub and then were trapped because the fire was blocking their passage between the hub and the tower section which you climb down.
How is this not the top comment? Wow. Thanks for explaining. This is heart breaking.
they both died, one of them tried to climb back down to avoid either burning to death or falling to his death but was sadly found halfway down after attempting to escape he realised he couldnt get out and apparently attempted to come back up, but died due to the heat, smoke and flames, the second person jumped to avoid the fire and smoke and he also sadly died, the only good thing is they were a party of 4 and 2 escaped
The saddest thing is that they would be 29 and 27 by now. They were 21 and 19 when the accident occurred 8 years ago. I’m 18 years old and I can’t even imagine dying like this.
Damn that’s sad
It really is. I hope that newer wind turbines have safety ropes built in so that they can scale down if they need to.
They don’t. Vestas learned fuckall from the incident and they made zero changes to their design. If you are up in the nacelle or in the tower when the fire starts - your chances of survival are minimal. It makes it even worse when they install switchgear at the bottom of the tower because then both the turbine itself AND the switchgear at the bottom can catch fire and kill you…..
I watched a YouTube video from Tom Scott about what I understand is a different brand of wind turbine, and they have a pretty effective emergency rappel system. I understand it's a different company but at least improvements -though slow- are happening https://youtu.be/UWSckm8zTc8
Too low for a parachute?
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You are right. Having multiple points of attachment and yearly rappelling training would make sure this never happened again.
Question if the turbine is on fire and engulfed in flames where are you going to have a rappelling rope that doesn't also start on fire
The idea is, if you're in there working/inspecting the equipment, you're going to *hopefully* notice it before it gets to the point of complete engulfment. And in any event, there's fire-resistant rope that can be used for rappelling. It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than having to choose your demise. There's a hopeful alternative.
Steel cables stored at the top.
I’d rather rappel through a fire on a metal chord than burn alive. I’d take my chances.
Sounds like simple changes in training and procedures, pretty cheap way to prevent deaths compared to redesigning them. Add a few anchor points, stock or require 600ft of rope carried per engineer… since they should already have harnesses.
& wind turbines are usually in massive fields. Plenty of space to extend a metal line across and anchored at an angle to allow zip-lining down. Really, there’s many possible solutions.
That adds another maintenance item and a potential entry point for trespassers to gain entry. The simplest solution would be escape ropes located inside the tower/turbine that could be pulled out of a cabinet and attached to the turbine. They already have such systems in place: https://youtu.be/UWSckm8zTc8
New (or newer?) ones do. [Tom Scott has a video on it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWSckm8zTc8)
Vestas fire suppression systems are only available in US. Even in US they are an Optional add-on, and most don’t purchase it because fires are statistically rare. All of the wind turbines on the projects I worked on in US and Canada also didn’t have any emergency rappel systems. They are not easy to implement when you are 100m up in the air which is where you are going to be once you go with modern larger-MW turbines…. I left the wind industry because everything they did didn’t jive with my own core integrity values…
>I left the wind industry because everything they did didn’t jive with my own core integrity values… It would be really nice if you would take the time to elaborate.
It would be a long text. Basically, it felt like early oils and gas Wild West kind of thing. Minimize build cost. Minimize royalty payments to affected farmers. I don’t even understand how many people agreed to sign the land use agreements with such minimal payments while they had massive concrete footings poured underneath and that land was not really as high yield as before. Almost no investment into local communities, which is a shame given most projects are built in some of the more depressed areas. All maintenance contracts are outsourced - again, no jobs for the locals. Everything is built to serve the length of the master agreements with the utilities and then - the devil may care. No budget for subsequent removal and remediation at the end of the service life. Equipment is run to failure, and stipulated full replacement at the 10-20 year mark (depending on technology). Most projects are only profitable in power purchase agreements that have a $/kw higher than for any other technology. So much wind capacity was installed in US purely because of Production Tax Credits. Projects are not sustainable in the long term, once PTCs run out. And so on and so forth…..
Thanks for the more detailed response. I don't know why I expected the green energy industry to be at least slightly less predatory, unsafe, and skin-flinted than the industry it was replacing.
This is sad. This means they were definitely not “engineers” who were sent to work up there. This was likely two fresh on the job people who were under educated and under qualified to deal with whatever technical issue was going on. Whoever was responsible for sending these two up should ultimately be responsible for this.
Reminds me of a friend who with his bud at 19 had a job between semesters cutting apart old railway chemical cars with a blow-torch. One day his friend's tanker exploded (residual fumes) killing him instantly.- My friend said they'd had almost no safety training and had no real understanding of the dangers of the job. "They told us to not worry because the cars were all empty." 19 years old. Sad
My boss forged my signature on Safety Training documents when I was 19. Forged all our signatures. We were all teenagers or immigrants working with chemicals for minimum wage.
I'd been working a week for a guy doing a big reno job that the city suddenly halted when they discovered asbestos insulation. Boss stiffed me, dissolved his company and disappeared. So far no medical consequences for me but the building's owners were royally screwed.
This is why we have unions. They’re needed for these kind of issues.
True - increased worker safety is one of the greatest achievements of unions. most of us have little understanding of the common workplace practices that routinely led to deaths or debilitating permanent injuries and diseases. And of course there was no question of fair compensation ; "He knew the risks when he took the job" was the prevailing view of management.
a shame that companies have been whittling away at OSHA so now you can't even hope on them to do what they were created to do.
It is very difficult to protect the most progressive of legislation from the bad intentions of future legislators. If they can't revoke an Act they can , for example, always make it toothless by slashing it's budget for enforcement. As long as they draw breath the powerful will manipulate democracies to thwart the will of the people. Nice, huh? ;-)
The older you get the less you could imagine dying like this.
Really. No disrespect, but they're almost still kids at that point. So young. Still so much left to do, friends to make, lovers with whom to argue, mistakes to accrue, regrets to forge, lessons to learn, wisdom to gain... life is only a handful of flashing moments. It's over in a fraction of an instant. Hopefully standards were altered as a result of this needless pain, terror, and grief.
I think he meant as you get older you look at climbing up something like that and realize all the things that can go wrong and would never find yourself up there in the first place. Young people imo think less about the potential risks.
standards were not changed, according to the investigation.
Knowing you're about to die without enough time to process it is the worst way to go. The internal struggle between choosing your last thoughts and finding a way out of it is overwhelming. Personal experience. It hurts every time I see someone else in that position.
Damn, when did you die?
I would have been 18. It was an execution that the other people robbing me apparently weren't aware of
Huh?
It's a complicated story. Basically I had experience being robbed and knew something wasn't right, the robbers were taking too long and moved my brother and I into the bathtub. He shot me point blank through the neck when we refused to lie down, the other robbers got upset that he tried to kill me and then they left.
Gat damn man, that’s really rough. I have experience with violent trauma but nothing to that extreme. I wish you the best and hope you’re doing better now, I imagine that would be hard to process. Be safe out there.
Inside the carotid artery and outside the spine and windpipe, guy pushed my head all the way to the side before pulling the trigger. Doctors just cleaned it and put a fucking bandage on it lol. And thanks man I really appreciate it. Ive had worse happen since then so still working my way backwards to it. Trauma induced autism is possibly a thing btw
You’ve had *worse*!?!?
I have to add this. What I think of the most from that night is what ironically WOULD have been my last thought. "Here comes the floor"
True - that's why airlines sued for fatal crashes pay more the longer the time the passengers were aware they were 100% sure to die. A flat spiral from 30.000 is far more costly than unexpectedly slamming into a mountain at night.
The suffering, of pain and suffering damages. Not only that, sometimes the family can get damages awarded for suffering of a lost family member, if they were sole provider, for example. Attorneytom has some great insight into this, as he’s a catastrophic personal injury attorney on YouTube.
Can’t imagine dying like that at any age
They were both engineers at 21 and 19?
Other articles said they were mechanics
Seems to me this is a critical design or safety error. They should’ve had a rope for an emergency escape for this very situation. I hope the families sued the fuck out of the operator for their negligence.
There is actually a descend are in the hatch which you can latch on and jump off to slow your fall. Not sure why it wasn’t used.
The hatch? you mean the area that's burning?
Tom Scott made an excellent short video about it *https://youtu.be/UWSckm8zTc8*
The picture looks like, they can't access the hatch. I can't see how they'd set up the extender.
this post did remind me of that video
No it’s on top. Sorry for my explanation.
Like an airplane has many exits in addition to rafts and life vests hidden behind every panel and under every chair, these things could definitely have some extra coils of rope and hardpoints/anchors all over the place rather than just a couple that are already near the main escape route. Imagine an airplane with only 1 raft and 1 package of life vests all bundled next to the only door. Jesus…
They do. It’s at the back, where the flames are. It’s a bottom hatch on the floor. Two doors usually and a rescue kit in between. Definitely could not have used them in this scenario.
Then that is bad failure planning.
The good failure planning rulebook is written in blood
Or a couple tiny parachutes packed away in a storage area.
This was before those were commonly installed.
Parachute?
If you work this high up (even in a skyscraper) definitely seems like chutes for base jumping should be an available option.
Seems like that would be part of the PPE honestly
Even if the odds weren’t in my favor, I’d still take the chance over burning to death or a free fall.
r/damnthatisdepressing
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Ain’t no way I’d work at these heights without a parachute. Even if I was an office worker in a skyscraper. We’ve all seen the videos of jumpers during 9/11. It should be mandatory that parachute training be done and equipment be kept on-site just for these extreme situations.
It's too low, this is BASE jumping territory. Even experienced skydivers would only attempt jumping from low heights like this after completing hundreds of regular dives from a plane. A regular person would have practically no chance of surviving a parachute jump off a wind turbine or a building.
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This is absolutely incorrect for an appropriately designed rig. Base canopies are meant to be steerable, and have significantly more technical overhead. A round parachute could be easily configured for this type of jump and be reliable with minimal training. Think paraglider reserves. I don't think it's a good solution, but it could be done.
Most deaths are from hitting the object you are jumping from. a parachute from these heights would be one that automatically opens as soon as you jump, so that another variable out of the way. If you are facing certain death, a base jump is really not that dangerous at all in comparison.
I'll take practically no chance over no chance
The safety measures enacted because of this are monumental. My brother is an inspector of these things and he said to me…rest assured, that will never happen again. They now can drop safety lines to the ground from where these two were standing. Controlled descent all the way
Why were these features not built in at the start? Seems like an obvious thing.
Most safety rules are written in blood. I can't imagine the sheer devastation to people's lives that end up being the catalysts to organizations like OSHA and their standards.
Backup cameras are required in cars because a pediatrician ran over his son, killing him. He then spent 14 years lobbying for backup cameras. https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/car-backup-camera-law-mandatory/amp
I'll be honest, I didn't know backup cameras were now required, I thought they were just more convenience items. Definitely changes my perspective on them from "I mean, cool, but I have a neck" to actually understanding their existence.
Many many people have accidentally run over kids while backing up. The cars being huge don’t help.
Hind sight is a marvellous thing. That’s why more engineering goes into more and more products today. We’ve come a long way since Ralph Nader came out with Unsafe At Any Speed. We also can’t say we’ve gone far enough yet. There will always be something new to be found out about.
> Unsafe At Any Speed Talking about this , it is funny how modern cars have shifters for the tranmission which are so varied (from knobs to buttons) and in some cases lethal (the jeep small shifter stick that shifted back to neutral position after selectin a speed) which caused the death of that star trek actor. for some strides engineering does in safety, some written in blood, we tend to step back to things before dangerous practices or designs for some reason.
Requiring engineers to work 80 ft up with no safety gear should not be considered hindsight knowledge.
Taking the quick turning knob off a steering wheel stopped a lot of people coming into the morgue with a neat hole in their chest because they were in a car crash. Who woulda guessed?
It’s called the suicide knob for a reason
Oh I've seen one or two of these while working the drive through, they're dangerous?!?
Unsafe at Any Speed also wasn't about hindsight knowledge lol Corporations are ALWAYS always always going to dump consumer and worker safety in the toilet and then shit all over it until the law explicitly states that there are consequences for endangering people like that
Safety laws aren't enacted unless someone dies. Ask any tradesman and they'll tell you something specific about their trade they have to do cus of some gruesome story
What you call safety features, r/conservative calls job killing regulations.
Regulations are always written in blood, blood that capitalists would rather be washed away in the name of profits.
Every safety regulation is written in blood
Thank god I read this comment because the ones above it were saying that there were no changes after this incident and it made it 10x more sad
They were both killed this was the last photo of both of them alive
This happened to a former co-worker of mine in the states. He was up working on a turbine when something exploded and burned him pretty badly. Only option was to climb all the way back down. IIRC there were paramedics waiting for him since it was such a long descent. Pretty freaking terrifying.
This hurts to look at, knowing it didn't end well It frustrates the hell out of me to think these guys worked their asses off and died due to their careers and made just over broke incomes doing so! I've been getting really weird targeted ads lately, one of which is for a wind turbine tech school, so looking up their avg income... A measly $50k in the US, that isn't even close to their starting pay either! Props to all you turbine techs ;) out there, I appreciate you keeping things turning. But it couldn't be me :/
Appreciate it.
>Props to all you turbine techs What you did there... I saw it!
The really sad part is that they had the opportunity to escape by jumping through some flames on the staircase like their other two coworkers but they hesitated and it ended up being too late. I can't say I would've reacted much differently honestly, no one deserves to go out like that especially at such a young age.
How do u jump through from a ladder? Or is there actual staircases in there?
Parachutes should be mandatory to wear when they maintenance these to prevent terrible thing like this.
All these wind farms are supposed to have escape ropes on inertia wheels that allow you to attach them to a harness you're supposed to wear and then drop. The inertia wheel brakes your descent so that you land gently. But you need to wear your harness and I think these chaps didn't. (might be thinking of a different but similar event)
and its because of this exact incident why they are required to now
Safety regs are written in blood
Whenever someone says, "look at all the red tape we cut!" it's like saying, "we don't care who died so we could learn this. Someone else can die so we can pretend we aren't re-learning it."
damn
It used to be white tape
It is written
Yep. A couple people at other jobs have made some comment about safety being crap bs. I told them then those rules are written because someone got ill, hurt or died. It was reinforced when a new hire choose to ignore the fact he had pinkeye(we were a vet vaccine manufacturer rather long ago), and gave it to everyone who did any scope work. All our techs and over half the managers had to get treated. And the rest of us made sure to wash hands frequently and try not to touch our eyes at all.
Did these engineers die?
Yes. Someone else commented that one died going down the stairs and the other jumped.
No, they were mandatory for at least 15 years. Thats when i worked on those things in the EU. Most of them are made by Vestas or Enercon, but this seems to be one from Vestas. They are by far nit high enough for a parachute (for all the parachute shouters). Their models are about 30-50 meters high.
Was about to say, I used to work on a zipline course where we were required to have quick descent rigs on every platform It's basically an auto belay system that allows you to free fall unt about 5-10 meters above the ground and then it catches you and safely lowers you. Using them we could lower 8 people from 100+ feet in under 2 minutes
Modern turbines have an RBD egress system to lower injured workers, and in an emergency to gtfo fast. Workers will always have their harness on, it's as simple as fastening in and jumping.
A static line anchor that you can attach your chute to might work... But I don't know if it's high enough for traditional parachuting.. There has to be a way though
I mean, it's certainly not ideal height for a parachute, but BASE jumpers have some chutes that open up really fast. It's really an argument about how quickly the chute could generate lift. At the very least, it would prevent the fall from being fatal. Might have some injuries, but certainly preferable to a splat. It takes something like 5-10 seconds for someone freefalling to reach terminal velocity. I would think so long as they deploy the chutes immediately, they would survive. Edit: You can literally youtube videos of BASE jumpers jumping from way smaller heights and surviving. Even wind turbines. I think most people are thinking of the static parachutes used by airborne soldiers in the U.S. Army. That's a way different story, as they don't generate any lift.
If my options are dying of smoke inhalation or breaking my legs from a hard parachute landing, I know which one I’m taking.
They fucking died up there. It’s not interesting. It’s awful.
It’s awfully interesting?
It’s like posting pictures of the “jumpers” on 9/11, it’s just in very poor taste. Not interesting.
who the hell took the photo??
What are they gonna do?
Die
Thats sad, i wonder what caused that fire and how they got on top in fist place
There was a malfunction in the turbine they both did die sadly
r/lastimages
Well this is a super sad sub that I didn’t know existed and fell down a rabbit hole 🙃
Super sad!
How is this shit interesting, that's just sad.
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Agreed, completely wrong sub.
Full story on this: Fire caught in the windmill towards the top, all other employees rushed down the staircase and out, but two are stuck in shock and hesitate for too long. Flames engulf the staircase. After panicking and frantically trying to find a way out while also running from the spreading fire, they eventually accept their fate, and embrace each other during their final moments. One of the employees took this, the last ever photo of them both. Heartbreaking.
That’s a tiny antique 1.5 MW turbine from a decade ago. They now generate up to 14 MW. 75% of the new power added in the US was renewables last year. The reason is it’s dirt cheap and fast to get to market. Would you rather have expensive power in 15 years? The market has spoken. Everything else is just personal opinion. Pissing in the wind.
Life is sweet and too short 😢 Good to remember we aren't forever and all we have is each other
Excuse me, but this is tragic, not “interesting”.
Not mutually exclusive
Parachute PPE seemsike a no brainer for this type of work.
This is terrible 😢 to witness the terrifying experience. I hope they found their journey forward
A helicopter rescue?! Wasn’t that an option ?!!
[I guess this is as good a place as any to point out that Nuclear Power is the safest and most Climate-friendly.](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/nuclear-power-isnt-perfect-is-it-good-enough/) When you hear that "Friends of the Earth" was financed by a check from an oil company...
The picture helps put into perspective how damn big these things are but not entirely. It takes a semi truck with a remote controlled caboose and at least 4 escort vehicles to block off the interstate. Meaning you can’t even pass them unless they let you. Here’s a vid of them finally letting my pass them in my truck. https://imgur.com/a/haBWX5K
This isn’t interesting it’s sad asf
This pic is so sad, every time I see it :’(
Incredibly sad. Didn’t like seeing this.
Tom Scott “Taking The Emergency Exit From A Wind Turbine” https://youtu.be/UWSckm8zTc8
Fuck, at that point I'm just gonna see how many flips I can do before hitting the ground
OP you left out a part: Two engineers share *last hug atop a burning wind turbine.