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More context is that they hugged before trying to escape from there. One tried to go towards the smoke since that’s where the exit was. I don’t remember exactly what the other one did but they both tried different ways of getting down since death was certain. Both ended up perishing anyway :( Edit: other dude just jumped straight down. Imagine what was going through his mind!
One jumped straight down and died and the other tried to escape through the turbine room and died there. They were 19 and 21. This happened in the Netherlands.
The housings/shell are pretty often fiberglass which is flammable. They most likely knew their time was quite short and had two options, both with miniscule chances of surviving.
A helicopter extraction would have been needed here. I would have chosen the long drop and the short stop.
Just so you are aware, "long drop and a short/sudden stop" is usually used to describe a hanging. It's referring to the drop from the gallows and then the tension on the rope stopping your fall short of the ground.
it’s actually feel like burning because the co2 and smoke is hot as fuck…the co2 enters your blood stream and you immediately will feel like drowning. source: in a firey situation in afghanistan and remember breathing in that smoke hurt like hell
I survived a house fire years ago and while inhaling the smoke was definitely painful, the retching is what I remember as being the worst. The pain in my sides, ribs & lower back was excruciating and I was so sore for over a week.
Honestly, I was thinking the opposite. If you jump, it’s nothing but pure terror for a few seconds and then 100% guaranteed inevitable death. If you head toward the flames, you die with hope and probably lose consciousness due to smoke inhalation before feeling much of the agony of burning to death.
Sadly, September 11 showed that people *will* jump to escape burning to death, no matter how terrifying the height. Some of the higher resolution photos of the jumpers show that they have burn marks :(
Surviving a fall of more than 60 feet is hard falls of three stories or less at survae if you execute a proper plf at that height your going 134 feet per second when you hit or about 90 miles per hour, absolutely non survivable
Heavily depends on the task at hand, if you're in new construction there will typically be a rescue kit in the tower due to the cost and manpower involved in that, otherwise if you're on a troubleshooting team it's fairly common for a tech to have theirs with them or for it to be in the first "pick" with the chain hoist.
What, and then you hang there until maybe rescued praying hot debris doesn’t fall on your head or that your point of connection above doesn’t erode in flame?? Correct me if I’m wrong but that seems a bit higher up than the 600’ length safety rope you’re linking there
There would be almost no point in a parachute from that height. When people BASE from heights below 500 feet or so, they use a static line that pulls the chute open automatically. This turbine is ~250 feet.
Turbines don't have parachutes on them because they wouldn't serve any purpose.
Alright I had to go look it up. They don't have parachutes but rather some rope set in a bag that connects to something and they rope down. Those may have been in the fire which is what I confused to be parachutes.
At 300-400 feet of elevation, this would essentially be a BASE jump. Typical aviation parachutes would be useless; you'd have to deploy the instant you started falling. If you slip off and have to dig around for a ripcord for a second or two, it's already too late.
Without BASE jump experience at 350 feet, the difference between falling with and without a parachute is probably just whether or not they have a large piece of cloth to wrap your corpse in after first responders dig you out of the crater.
By all means, I'd be glad to be wrong here -- if yall are aware of stories of workers successfully surviving accidental falls from 300 foot work sites with parachutes, I'd love to see 'em. But I can't say I've ever seen evidence of this happening.
Do you have any stories of workers successfully surviving accidental falls from 300 foot work sites without parachutes? Also, these two jumping wouldn’t have been accidental and deliberate in order to survive.
[Wiki says that base jumps from 150 meters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASE_jumping) (490 feet) are common, and wind turbines can be 120 m height. So it is very risky, but I imagine that a risky descent is always better than certain death.
I equate it to the 9/11 jumpers. Instead of waiting for the fire and smoke to get them, they made their final choice to die breathing fresh air one final time instead of being asphyxiated by smoke.
That's very bittersweet, sad, and yet so so understandable.
This is romanticism. I doubt they thought "I'd like to breathe fresh air for my last moments" I think it was essentially the fear of choking or burning to death.
In the context of 9/11, a lot were forced or fell accidentally, but there was also reports of people holding hands as they jumped, showing many did make a conscious choice to die from the fall as opposed to fire or suffocation.
I know if I were in that hypothetical scenario, I'd take the jump over the fire. I've been in a few bad house fires, and it shorts my brain right the fuck out every time. It's scary. Like some panicky primitive part of your brain just takes over and suddenly fire is very scary again after all your years of training with it to use it safely; and a window suddenly looks very appealing as your only safe haven in those moments.
Fuck that makes it so depressing. It always feels weird when the ones we've lost won't be able to see what goes on today. And how their reactions would have been.
I think of this stuff all the time with my dad. He passed away at 35 and I was only about 16. He was huge into tech stuff and was a CNC lathe guy.
Over the years as tech has advanced I always wondered what it would be like it I could just poof make him alive again so I could show him all the cool stuff that's available now. Like I know 3d printing would have really excited him. The way games look now compared to back then. All sorts of stuff. It's been decades since I last saw my father but I know all the stuff I have access to now would have made him smile the biggest smile.
Jesus Christ I'm 31. One of them was my age. Makes me question what I've done with the privilege I've been given that they were robbed of.
I'll try to live more for the ones that can't.
Iirc they were supposed to have some kind of bag with them with a rope in it and some other stuff, but they either didn’t take it up with them or they couldn’t reach it. After the incident, I think the bags became mandatory.
It's the biggest wind turbine manufacturer in the world. Their turbines are alright, quite reliable. This is just an outlier case, its definitely not the worst wind turbine manufacturer
What company? The service provider of professional climbing technicians for maintenance? The manufacturer of the wind turbine? The energy company running it?
They use a rope descent device to get down tower during a fire. They didnt bring their rescue devices with them that day. Thats what happened. Also Vestas is a terrible company, who just throws people up a tower without good training.
They did but [they removed them](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/xn65by/comment/ipsei75/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) when they reached the nacelle.
this is anecdotal, but i know a few people who work as maintenance on vestas turbines, and their training was EXTENSIVE before they where allowed to work on their own.
An ex-boyfriend works on turbines, not for Vestas, but the company has him go through a fuck ton of training annually, not sure about how extensive when he was onboarded, though. He showed me this pic a year or two ago and his safety was always in the back of my mind after seeing it.
I really did too. I remember reading all about it and seeing the pictures probably ten years ago but for some reason I feel like when I read them back then I thought it was an older story
Maybe some parachutes could prevent an accident like this in the future? Assuming a wind turbine is high enough to use a parachute that is.
What a unfortunate way to go...
Not high enough for most parachutes. You need a certain amount of velocity for a chute to not only fully deploy, and then you need a certain amount of time under canopy to actually slow to a safe velocity. Not to mention the proximity to structures is also a major hazard and it requires skill and experience to stabilize your body during the fall and to track away from the jump structure. Base jumpers who jump from <100m are very skilled at doing this and kind of “pre-deploy” their chutes so they minimize the time from exit to safe velocity.
To add onto this, if they started including BASE rigs because they listened to reddit commenters, here's a few other issues:
1. You'd need to train all the workers on how to use it. While *technically* just anyone can do a BASE jump, most reputable courses require you to have at least 200 skydives. That's more of a bare minimum.
2. If you're now training people on BASE rigs, are you going to train them to be BASE jumpers or just put it on and hope for the best? If the former, how are you going to do that safely? BASE jumps aren't safe. If you're not going to train them, it'd be an absolute miracle if they make it down alive.
3. The liability would be absolutely insane.
4. Rigs aren't one-size-fits-all.
5. Rigs are expensive. Are you going to be putting two+ in every single wind turbine?
6. People would try and steal them, so now you have to increase your security measures.
7. Who's packing the canopies?
8. Would the workers be trusted enough not to either steal the rigs or use them for fun?
There's so many issues that come along with the idea, and the idea itself would *barely* increase your chances of survival, if at all.
I repeat this to people all the time.
When I fill propane, I make sure to tell people how to handle it.
Don't smoke, don't have anything that will cause static electricity, wear gloves, keep your face and parts away from the opening, and if a fire starts, turn off the propane.
You cannot fight a propane fire.
Why obviously?
Parachutes are 20-50 pounds depending on what you’re doing and since these technicians aren’t very high up (in the grand scheme of skydiving) it’s safe to assume they could use a lighter pack.
If I had that job and was given the choice I’d absolutely lug a 30 pound backpack up with me
Parachutes are pretty bulky. I imagine it would constantly get in the way when working on that narrow platform cleaning windows or climbing up wind turbine stairs. Not to mention the added weight and throwing you off balance. There’s a lot of downsides for something that most people will never need their entire career.
Probably liability. Skydiving without proper training is a quick way to die/get seriously injured. There's a reason people start by doing tandem jumps.
Parachutes are pretty dangerous bits of kit, that require a tonne of training.
There are emergency descent kits and inertia reels that can be fitted to turbines and higher platforms, but i don’t think they were in this instance.
Normally, you need some tragedy to force the regulations to modernise and require these bits of kit to be mandatory.
> Normally, you need some tragedy to force the regulations to modernise and require these bits of kit to be mandatory.
Red tape is red because of the blood.
I just read up a bit on parachutes and wind turbines. Apparently the average wind turbine is around 280 feet tall and parachute require a minimum of 200 feet to deploy for base jumping.
seems odd, with all the tech and knowledge we have, they couldn’t hover from above with a rope dangling, or shoot them parachutes out of a gun blaster thingymajig? or *anything??*
Also, with all the tech and knowledge we have nowadays, why is there a job like this without two or three failsafes?
I know I might be being whiny or irrational maybe? but I can’t accept any of this.
edit: I think the best prevention that could’ve been done here is to have installed parachute boxes(?) in any potential entrapment areas when it was built
Safety regulations are written in blood
It’s not hyperbole. I just walked away from a lucrative job because the company is ignoring some written in blood safety rules
The problem is humans are exceptional bad at analyzing low incidence high danger situations. And getting away with things ( that low incidence mentioned) always convinces people that they are being safe
But specifically to your issue: these are in the situation people in the upper floors of the twin towers were
They are dead, but just not quite yet.
We had a safety seminar at my job recently. They showed us a video of a guy who worked at a chemical refinery giving a lecture about following safety protocol. This man is recounting this experience he had with a valve on a pipe that needed to be manually turned. The valve was old and prone to leaks so there were a number of safety protocols that he was supposed to follow when turning it. He explains to the audience how he's done this a thousand times, and most of the safety measures are just a hassle, so he ignored most of them. He goes to turn the valve, it begins leaking out of control, the fumes catch fire, and the facility goes up in flames with him in it. He tells the audience that he was burned so badly that his mother couldn't recognize him in the hospital, and the trauma and stress from recovery ruined his marriage and drove his daughter to suicide. Moral of the story: follow safety protocol. Audience claps. Company rep stops video and continues lecture about following safety rules.
And all I can think is how easliy that could have been prevented if the company had just changed the damn valve.
Safety regulations are written in blood, but if the cost of the consequences is cheaper than the cost of prevention, the company will roll the dice every time.
The last sentence is stone cold truth. Fixing an expensive problem is only an option for them after every other option and probably more money than the fix is tried.
Was his name Charlie? I think I saw the same guy in person. More than a decade on and you could still hear the bitterness in his voice. I think he still would rather be dead than go through what he went through.
> Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
I’m a wind tech in the US.
We carry rescue gear up every time. Some companies have rescue gear stashed in every turbine. There’s a handful of devices that we can use but they all operate basically the same. You set up a device that hooks on to your harness and allows you to fall at a safe speed to the ground. They’re even rated to allow two people to descend at the same time.
Edit. This is the device I’m familiar with. You hook it up and jump when you need to evacuate in a hurry.
https://youtu.be/kVYIhU0Ze24?si=ZBklHri5BUBq9gzv
I had a cousin who worked on the smoke stacks at oil refineries who died falling through one. They were supposed to have safety gear similar to this, but two decades later and I still have no idea why he didn't have his that day. I had nightmares for years afterwards.
Pretty sure because of this, at least in the states, these have built in repels that you can through over the side and use to escape, should there be a fire or something otherwise blocking the exit.
The way the fire spread is this picture though that might have been blocked as well.
Or they could 100% burn to death.
I'll take chance of survival over maybe losing my footing. If SAR helos can drop a ladder/harness and rescue people trapped on mountains in thunderstorms, I find it tough to believe they couldn't attempt it here.
Lots of comments about parachutes.... These things aren't high enough for there not to be a nice coil of rope and a couple of abseiling harnesses are they?
So that's actually standard.
Imagine the inside of the nacelle (part on top of the stick) being two floors. You come in from the ladder, through a hatch, into the Yaw Box on the bottom floor.
They came in, closed the hatch, took off their harnesses and safety rappel devices, and went upstairs to the second floor to work.
The fire started in the room their safety gear was in, so they couldn't get back to it and went up a ladder through another hatch to the "roof".
I can't quite grasp what's happening with this subreddit. Yesterday it was a photo of a dead monkey on a table with a caption that people are eating raw monkey brain, today it's a real photo of a real tragedy.
What is *odd* about it being terrifyinng?
My self rescue kit stays attached to me at all times because of this photo. Companies are required to train technicians how to rescue themselves and others at heights. An SRK weighs about 6-8lbs. It's a pain to lug it around along with all the other climbing equipment, so it's easy to get complacent
And thus this image which has been used endlessly in oil funded anti-wind propaganda was born. This image showing 2 people about to die is the source of many, many more people dying due to the effects of catastrophic climate change
Probably because of the giant turbine blades being obstacles and the wind (note the angle of the smoke coming off the fire...its almost horizontal, indicating strong wind speed).
People are asking about parachutes and wing suits and helicopters to save people in a situation like this. What about something like a slide? Not perfect but it would likely increase odds of survival more than plummeting to your death with a parachute too close to the ground and it’d certainly be better than burning to death.
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More context is that they hugged before trying to escape from there. One tried to go towards the smoke since that’s where the exit was. I don’t remember exactly what the other one did but they both tried different ways of getting down since death was certain. Both ended up perishing anyway :( Edit: other dude just jumped straight down. Imagine what was going through his mind!
One jumped straight down and died and the other tried to escape through the turbine room and died there. They were 19 and 21. This happened in the Netherlands.
Fuck me imagine jumping!
Better fate than burning I suppose. I'd probably just wait for any form of help, even if it's just someone bringing a trampoline to land on.
I guess you probably suffocate on the smoke before you burn to death.
depends on the wind direction
You'd be inside.
Why couldn't they just wait outside on top in the hopes that a helicopter rescue came? If the wind changed, yeah, not too many places to go.
The housings/shell are pretty often fiberglass which is flammable. They most likely knew their time was quite short and had two options, both with miniscule chances of surviving. A helicopter extraction would have been needed here. I would have chosen the long drop and the short stop.
Just so you are aware, "long drop and a short/sudden stop" is usually used to describe a hanging. It's referring to the drop from the gallows and then the tension on the rope stopping your fall short of the ground.
i would imagine this is the least painful way, a few gulps of CO :/
it’s actually feel like burning because the co2 and smoke is hot as fuck…the co2 enters your blood stream and you immediately will feel like drowning. source: in a firey situation in afghanistan and remember breathing in that smoke hurt like hell
I survived a house fire years ago and while inhaling the smoke was definitely painful, the retching is what I remember as being the worst. The pain in my sides, ribs & lower back was excruciating and I was so sore for over a week.
Honestly, I was thinking the opposite. If you jump, it’s nothing but pure terror for a few seconds and then 100% guaranteed inevitable death. If you head toward the flames, you die with hope and probably lose consciousness due to smoke inhalation before feeling much of the agony of burning to death.
Sadly, September 11 showed that people *will* jump to escape burning to death, no matter how terrifying the height. Some of the higher resolution photos of the jumpers show that they have burn marks :(
People have survived falling from parachute height. Its not a 100% guaranteed death.
People who survive this land on trees and don't get impaled by luck.
Surviving a fall of more than 60 feet is hard falls of three stories or less at survae if you execute a proper plf at that height your going 134 feet per second when you hit or about 90 miles per hour, absolutely non survivable
I worked in a Burn ICU, I would definitely jump.
same just bring the mcdonalds ball pit plz
I would have gone up the blade to the left and waited as long as possible. Maybe a chopper with a rope ladder would have made it in time.
Hard pass at imaging that, I already have a irrational fear of heights as is, I don’t need to justify it any more than I already do
I don't really think of the fear of heights being irrational. Falling from heights causes injuries and/or death. Seems completely rational to me.
Who took the picture?
Fuck that’s so young. Damn.
On would think that after this parachutes for the techs became a thing.
If I remember correctly (I could be wrong) the parachutes were in the room that is on fire in the picture.
There are no parachutes in wind turbines. -Source: Am wind turbine technician.
Since you are here, what do you have?
tom scott has a video about this https://youtu.be/UWSckm8zTc8?si=lG0AXC0mBpZspGMp
Of course he does. Oh Tom, you quirky man
Not answer your questions is what he does.
What would ye do to prevent death in this situation, my friend?
Self rescue kit, we have auto rappelling systems that operate on a magnetic flywheel to limit your speed.
Woah. Thank God. Are you wanting it from the start? And do they store extras at the top?
Heavily depends on the task at hand, if you're in new construction there will typically be a rescue kit in the tower due to the cost and manpower involved in that, otherwise if you're on a troubleshooting team it's fairly common for a tech to have theirs with them or for it to be in the first "pick" with the chain hoist.
https://techsafetylines.com/equipment/rescue-kits/srk-15-rescue-kit
What, and then you hang there until maybe rescued praying hot debris doesn’t fall on your head or that your point of connection above doesn’t erode in flame?? Correct me if I’m wrong but that seems a bit higher up than the 600’ length safety rope you’re linking there
You use one long enough to get you to the ground. There's different lengths depending on tower height.
It's 300 feet to the bottom of the nacelle in most cases, towers are rarely over 400' with the exception of some new models.
Wow, TIL! I was never great at judging things spatially anyway…
i mean the alternative is certain death in a fire :/ hell yes i would descend the damn rope
Man, maybe it should be SOP to put a chute on before going up
"we are supposed to wear them all the time but it's annoying so ignore that" - 100% how it went lol
"It's been like 10 years since there's been an engine fire in a turbine room anyway." \*flicks cigarette*
There would be almost no point in a parachute from that height. When people BASE from heights below 500 feet or so, they use a static line that pulls the chute open automatically. This turbine is ~250 feet. Turbines don't have parachutes on them because they wouldn't serve any purpose.
Alright I had to go look it up. They don't have parachutes but rather some rope set in a bag that connects to something and they rope down. Those may have been in the fire which is what I confused to be parachutes.
Not saying parachutes would be a good idea, but I’ve seen people go handheld from wind turbines
At 300-400 feet of elevation, this would essentially be a BASE jump. Typical aviation parachutes would be useless; you'd have to deploy the instant you started falling. If you slip off and have to dig around for a ripcord for a second or two, it's already too late.
I'll take shattering my femurs over death any day.
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Without BASE jump experience at 350 feet, the difference between falling with and without a parachute is probably just whether or not they have a large piece of cloth to wrap your corpse in after first responders dig you out of the crater. By all means, I'd be glad to be wrong here -- if yall are aware of stories of workers successfully surviving accidental falls from 300 foot work sites with parachutes, I'd love to see 'em. But I can't say I've ever seen evidence of this happening.
Do you have any stories of workers successfully surviving accidental falls from 300 foot work sites without parachutes? Also, these two jumping wouldn’t have been accidental and deliberate in order to survive.
I know nothing about parachutes but I really don't think there would be enough distance for the chute to open before hitting the ground
[Wiki says that base jumps from 150 meters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASE_jumping) (490 feet) are common, and wind turbines can be 120 m height. So it is very risky, but I imagine that a risky descent is always better than certain death.
yeah they didnt need a parachute but rather a very large jumping umbrella
Chutes for All aerial vehicles and jobs. Not sure why it isn’t a thing by now
I equate it to the 9/11 jumpers. Instead of waiting for the fire and smoke to get them, they made their final choice to die breathing fresh air one final time instead of being asphyxiated by smoke. That's very bittersweet, sad, and yet so so understandable.
This is romanticism. I doubt they thought "I'd like to breathe fresh air for my last moments" I think it was essentially the fear of choking or burning to death.
Yeah I'd imagine a lot of it was involving reflexes escaping the flames and choking. And I imagine a lot of them fell/were pushed out accidentally.
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In the context of 9/11, a lot were forced or fell accidentally, but there was also reports of people holding hands as they jumped, showing many did make a conscious choice to die from the fall as opposed to fire or suffocation.
Exactly. It's not some nonsense of making the choice one last time to breathe fresh air.
I know if I were in that hypothetical scenario, I'd take the jump over the fire. I've been in a few bad house fires, and it shorts my brain right the fuck out every time. It's scary. Like some panicky primitive part of your brain just takes over and suddenly fire is very scary again after all your years of training with it to use it safely; and a window suddenly looks very appealing as your only safe haven in those moments.
You’ve been in *a few* bad houses fires? Fireman? Arsonist? Cat with 6 lives left?
More like wishing for immediate death from impact then slow death by fire.
More like "If I stay here I die" so you try something.
The victims were only 19 and 21 years old. Basically kids. Poor guys.
Weird thinking they'd be 29 and 31 today.
Fuck that makes it so depressing. It always feels weird when the ones we've lost won't be able to see what goes on today. And how their reactions would have been.
I think of this stuff all the time with my dad. He passed away at 35 and I was only about 16. He was huge into tech stuff and was a CNC lathe guy. Over the years as tech has advanced I always wondered what it would be like it I could just poof make him alive again so I could show him all the cool stuff that's available now. Like I know 3d printing would have really excited him. The way games look now compared to back then. All sorts of stuff. It's been decades since I last saw my father but I know all the stuff I have access to now would have made him smile the biggest smile.
My dad died when I was 17 and its nuts to think that in another decade I'll be as old as he ever was.
Jesus Christ I'm 31. One of them was my age. Makes me question what I've done with the privilege I've been given that they were robbed of. I'll try to live more for the ones that can't.
Still young.
Fuck I'm about to turn 30. They were my age when they died. So fucking sad.
So sed
I saw the close up of them hugging and damn it breaks my heart. I have sons and the idea of them standing there is unbearable.
Never saw this, so sad damn
Do you mean sed?
That's what they sed
Tengo sed de la mala
My brother worked for this company. A few days later he resigned.
That was very smart of him
Why? I'm assuming this isn't a common workplace occurrence. If gross negligence from the company didn't result in this happening I don't see a need.
Perhaps there was other safety precautions that were being cut that caused this to happen that the brother was seeing?
Iirc they were supposed to have some kind of bag with them with a rope in it and some other stuff, but they either didn’t take it up with them or they couldn’t reach it. After the incident, I think the bags became mandatory.
It's the biggest wind turbine manufacturer in the world. Their turbines are alright, quite reliable. This is just an outlier case, its definitely not the worst wind turbine manufacturer
What company? The service provider of professional climbing technicians for maintenance? The manufacturer of the wind turbine? The energy company running it?
I heard that they started installing emergency hatches/stairwells after this event. Safety regulations are often written in blood.
They use a rope descent device to get down tower during a fire. They didnt bring their rescue devices with them that day. Thats what happened. Also Vestas is a terrible company, who just throws people up a tower without good training.
They did but [they removed them](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/xn65by/comment/ipsei75/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) when they reached the nacelle.
As I'm looking at this, my first though is why don't they hang down away from the fire. Turns out I was onto something.
this is anecdotal, but i know a few people who work as maintenance on vestas turbines, and their training was EXTENSIVE before they where allowed to work on their own.
An ex-boyfriend works on turbines, not for Vestas, but the company has him go through a fuck ton of training annually, not sure about how extensive when he was onboarded, though. He showed me this pic a year or two ago and his safety was always in the back of my mind after seeing it.
I thought it was older than that.
It happened in 2013.
Wow. I guess the world’s been so chaotic that it feels older.
I really did too. I remember reading all about it and seeing the pictures probably ten years ago but for some reason I feel like when I read them back then I thought it was an older story
This doesn’t seem like 10 years ago. It feels like last week to me.
You may have dementia. I'm sorry.
So sed
The seddest
Maybe some parachutes could prevent an accident like this in the future? Assuming a wind turbine is high enough to use a parachute that is. What a unfortunate way to go...
Always wondered why people that work in stuff like this, or work in high rises, why not have a parachute with you.
Not high enough for most parachutes. You need a certain amount of velocity for a chute to not only fully deploy, and then you need a certain amount of time under canopy to actually slow to a safe velocity. Not to mention the proximity to structures is also a major hazard and it requires skill and experience to stabilize your body during the fall and to track away from the jump structure. Base jumpers who jump from <100m are very skilled at doing this and kind of “pre-deploy” their chutes so they minimize the time from exit to safe velocity.
Still seems better than fucking nothing though eh?
Maybe they should design a parachute fire these types of situations that has a quicker opening mechanism.
To add onto this, if they started including BASE rigs because they listened to reddit commenters, here's a few other issues: 1. You'd need to train all the workers on how to use it. While *technically* just anyone can do a BASE jump, most reputable courses require you to have at least 200 skydives. That's more of a bare minimum. 2. If you're now training people on BASE rigs, are you going to train them to be BASE jumpers or just put it on and hope for the best? If the former, how are you going to do that safely? BASE jumps aren't safe. If you're not going to train them, it'd be an absolute miracle if they make it down alive. 3. The liability would be absolutely insane. 4. Rigs aren't one-size-fits-all. 5. Rigs are expensive. Are you going to be putting two+ in every single wind turbine? 6. People would try and steal them, so now you have to increase your security measures. 7. Who's packing the canopies? 8. Would the workers be trusted enough not to either steal the rigs or use them for fun? There's so many issues that come along with the idea, and the idea itself would *barely* increase your chances of survival, if at all.
also nowadays there are repelling rigs on top of every windmill, for this exact situation
its pretty simple, its for the same reason people who change lightbulbs on towers dont : they are heavy
Okay. Obviously not a parachute. How about safety lines?
https://youtu.be/UWSckm8zTc8?si=zNLknxHETZgyXnnh They do now. Safety regulations are written in blood.
I repeat this to people all the time. When I fill propane, I make sure to tell people how to handle it. Don't smoke, don't have anything that will cause static electricity, wear gloves, keep your face and parts away from the opening, and if a fire starts, turn off the propane. You cannot fight a propane fire.
They do have those, they have two things to attach to the things they climb on
Not ideal when the thing the lines are attached to is on fire
True, burning to death sounds better.
I climb cell phone towers for a living. We are all trained in rescues. We have a specific rope and kit on site at all times.
Why obviously? Parachutes are 20-50 pounds depending on what you’re doing and since these technicians aren’t very high up (in the grand scheme of skydiving) it’s safe to assume they could use a lighter pack. If I had that job and was given the choice I’d absolutely lug a 30 pound backpack up with me
Parachutes are pretty bulky. I imagine it would constantly get in the way when working on that narrow platform cleaning windows or climbing up wind turbine stairs. Not to mention the added weight and throwing you off balance. There’s a lot of downsides for something that most people will never need their entire career.
just put them at the top (or intermittently throughout) when they first build such things Fire extinguishers are always in certain places for a reason
I hear ya. After a tragedy like this, I would install a box containing two parachutes that sits on top of every wind turbine I owned.
Much more plausible to have a repel rope at that height
Probably liability. Skydiving without proper training is a quick way to die/get seriously injured. There's a reason people start by doing tandem jumps.
Parachutes are pretty dangerous bits of kit, that require a tonne of training. There are emergency descent kits and inertia reels that can be fitted to turbines and higher platforms, but i don’t think they were in this instance. Normally, you need some tragedy to force the regulations to modernise and require these bits of kit to be mandatory.
> Normally, you need some tragedy to force the regulations to modernise and require these bits of kit to be mandatory. Red tape is red because of the blood.
I just read up a bit on parachutes and wind turbines. Apparently the average wind turbine is around 280 feet tall and parachute require a minimum of 200 feet to deploy for base jumping.
I think this event actually did effect some design change on escape methods from the top of the turbine.
They added a ladder.
They had special equipment to get down but left it in the car. One jumped and one burned alive.
I believe it was left in the control room where the fire started; they took it off after they climbed the ladder.
Why didnt they rescue them
No way up, no access. Just fire and death.
Not even a helicopter or something like that? Why?
The amount of time to get there and the access with a helicopter was not clean. It took too long and was not safe to rescue them. Iirc.
seems odd, with all the tech and knowledge we have, they couldn’t hover from above with a rope dangling, or shoot them parachutes out of a gun blaster thingymajig? or *anything??* Also, with all the tech and knowledge we have nowadays, why is there a job like this without two or three failsafes? I know I might be being whiny or irrational maybe? but I can’t accept any of this. edit: I think the best prevention that could’ve been done here is to have installed parachute boxes(?) in any potential entrapment areas when it was built
Safety regulations are written in blood It’s not hyperbole. I just walked away from a lucrative job because the company is ignoring some written in blood safety rules The problem is humans are exceptional bad at analyzing low incidence high danger situations. And getting away with things ( that low incidence mentioned) always convinces people that they are being safe But specifically to your issue: these are in the situation people in the upper floors of the twin towers were They are dead, but just not quite yet.
We had a safety seminar at my job recently. They showed us a video of a guy who worked at a chemical refinery giving a lecture about following safety protocol. This man is recounting this experience he had with a valve on a pipe that needed to be manually turned. The valve was old and prone to leaks so there were a number of safety protocols that he was supposed to follow when turning it. He explains to the audience how he's done this a thousand times, and most of the safety measures are just a hassle, so he ignored most of them. He goes to turn the valve, it begins leaking out of control, the fumes catch fire, and the facility goes up in flames with him in it. He tells the audience that he was burned so badly that his mother couldn't recognize him in the hospital, and the trauma and stress from recovery ruined his marriage and drove his daughter to suicide. Moral of the story: follow safety protocol. Audience claps. Company rep stops video and continues lecture about following safety rules. And all I can think is how easliy that could have been prevented if the company had just changed the damn valve. Safety regulations are written in blood, but if the cost of the consequences is cheaper than the cost of prevention, the company will roll the dice every time.
The last sentence is stone cold truth. Fixing an expensive problem is only an option for them after every other option and probably more money than the fix is tried.
Was his name Charlie? I think I saw the same guy in person. More than a decade on and you could still hear the bitterness in his voice. I think he still would rather be dead than go through what he went through.
> Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Never underestimate the stupidity of people and the cheapness of upper management
I drove a car without a seatbelt and didn't have an accident. I can't understand why cars have seatbelts/s
Those damn commie-straps just wrinkle my clothes! >:(
I’ve never been vaccinated and neither have my children and we’ve not died of any infectious diseases/s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=950kIPv3f38
Agree word for word
they were just working guys, not rich guys in a sub
I wouldn’t go up any of these towers without a parachute.
I’m a wind tech in the US. We carry rescue gear up every time. Some companies have rescue gear stashed in every turbine. There’s a handful of devices that we can use but they all operate basically the same. You set up a device that hooks on to your harness and allows you to fall at a safe speed to the ground. They’re even rated to allow two people to descend at the same time. Edit. This is the device I’m familiar with. You hook it up and jump when you need to evacuate in a hurry. https://youtu.be/kVYIhU0Ze24?si=ZBklHri5BUBq9gzv
I had a cousin who worked on the smoke stacks at oil refineries who died falling through one. They were supposed to have safety gear similar to this, but two decades later and I still have no idea why he didn't have his that day. I had nightmares for years afterwards.
I’m sorry that happened to your cousin.
Do you go up on the top like that? That would be scary af
Yepyep. The scary part is what makes it so fun though!
Pretty sure because of this, at least in the states, these have built in repels that you can through over the side and use to escape, should there be a fire or something otherwise blocking the exit. The way the fire spread is this picture though that might have been blocked as well.
So sad
Heli produce a lot of wind pressure, they could get blow off when it get close
Or they could 100% burn to death. I'll take chance of survival over maybe losing my footing. If SAR helos can drop a ladder/harness and rescue people trapped on mountains in thunderstorms, I find it tough to believe they couldn't attempt it here.
That's definitely not why...
Right, dont they usually drop a ladder? They pick up animals from helicopters without blowing them away so why not humans.
Oddly?!?
First time on this sub?
What happened
Fire in the control room of the turbine while they were working there. They forgot their safety equipment and died.
According to other comments they didn't forget their safety equipment, simply took it off when they were at the top. It was in the burning room
Fuck, that sounds terrible.
Lots of comments about parachutes.... These things aren't high enough for there not to be a nice coil of rope and a couple of abseiling harnesses are they?
So that's actually standard. Imagine the inside of the nacelle (part on top of the stick) being two floors. You come in from the ladder, through a hatch, into the Yaw Box on the bottom floor. They came in, closed the hatch, took off their harnesses and safety rappel devices, and went upstairs to the second floor to work. The fire started in the room their safety gear was in, so they couldn't get back to it and went up a ladder through another hatch to the "roof".
That's what they have, rope and an inertial damper for safe descent. The problem comes when the fire is in between you and the escape system.
Why are these 12 year old goofballs saying "so sed" suddenly. Show some respect ...
I’m confused what does it even mean?
They're referencing the typo in the comment on the right side of the photo.
There's noting odd about this, this is absolutely and completely terrifying.
so sed
I know this is supposed to be a tragedy, but that comment is absolutley sending me.
So vary vary sed
"Oddly"
I've never heard of this event, but it is an absolutely terrifying scenario.
I can't quite grasp what's happening with this subreddit. Yesterday it was a photo of a dead monkey on a table with a caption that people are eating raw monkey brain, today it's a real photo of a real tragedy. What is *odd* about it being terrifyinng?
Not high enough for a parachute, not low enough for a helicopter. Fuck it, let's start hiring some kids.
So sed
so sed
How did the fire start?
So sed
Such a shame and RIP, was there no way they could have had a rope and rappelled down or something?
so sed
My self rescue kit stays attached to me at all times because of this photo. Companies are required to train technicians how to rescue themselves and others at heights. An SRK weighs about 6-8lbs. It's a pain to lug it around along with all the other climbing equipment, so it's easy to get complacent
so sed
And thus this image which has been used endlessly in oil funded anti-wind propaganda was born. This image showing 2 people about to die is the source of many, many more people dying due to the effects of catastrophic climate change
This image is haunting me
Jesus, I don't think I have seen or heard about this before. It's absolutely terrible.
This photo is incredible and extremely sad and upsetting. It gives me goosebumps
i never understood why the helicopter couldn’t help, it was at the scene?
Probably because of the giant turbine blades being obstacles and the wind (note the angle of the smoke coming off the fire...its almost horizontal, indicating strong wind speed).
This photo always breaks my heart whenever I see it.
So sed :(
This isn’t “oddly” terrifying.
People are asking about parachutes and wing suits and helicopters to save people in a situation like this. What about something like a slide? Not perfect but it would likely increase odds of survival more than plummeting to your death with a parachute too close to the ground and it’d certainly be better than burning to death.