January 3, 2018 – UPDATE: Authorities have released a statement that Clayton Donnell Barnhill of Grayson, La., was working on a communications tower fell approximately 320 feet to the ground from a 420-foot guyed tower. Based on reports by the Trego County Sheriff’s Office, a coworker on the tower with the deceased heard the deceased “click” his safety harness on, then …
Tower tech’s 150-foot fall in Mississippi is nation’s second 2017 fatality
Update: May 3, 2017 – Kris Edward Runyon, 39, has been identified as the tower technician who fell from a Crown Castle guyed tower near Meridian, Miss. yesterday evening and was pronounced dead at the scene. A resident of Portsmouth, Ohio, Runyon had been working for D&K Nationwide Communications Inc. of Bristol, Conn. for the past year, but according to the …
Crane collapse takes the life of a 51-year-old Texas industry worker
Update: April 26, 2017 – The cell tower compound that RMCI’s crane toppled into is owned by Crown Castle International. April 25, 2017 – A 51-year-old industry worker was killed yesterday afternoon when a crane tipped on its side in downtown Dallas, Tex., crashing into a cell tower compound in the 1700 block of Arts Place, according to Dallas Fire-Rescue …
California wireless contractor and his family killed in Oregon plane crash
A well-known and respected California contractor and his family were killed Friday while on a college scouting trip when their plane crashed in a rural field in Oregon. Authorities said John A. Zitting, 42, of Thousand Oaks, Calif.; his wife, Karen Blackmore Zitting , 37; and their son, John Brendan Zitting, 17, were headed to Eugene to visit the University …
Texas space program post says student was never in danger while climbing tower
A representative of the Eldorado Space Program, an Eldorado, Tex. high school program that teaches students to design instrumentation packages and launch them into space, said on its Facebook page Saturday that a cover story photograph in the March edition of QST published by the National Association for Amateur Radio, represented an inaccurate, unsafe depiction of a student climbing a …
Cover girl climber shot could send high schoolers to their death
Commentary – The March issue of a well-respected magazine published by The National Association for Amateur Radio (ARRL) will most likely latch onto the literal lunacy award for depicting in a photograph the most egregious tie-off violations one could imagine. In QST’s latest edition, their antenna issue, the cover shows a picture of Chase Mertz of Eldorado, Tex. climbing a …
Tech’s life is thankfully spared after his lift comes in contact with 115,000 volts
A tower tech is lucky to be alive after his bucket lift equipment came in contact with a 115,000 volt transmission line in Fresno, Calif. on Thursday at about 9:15 a.m. when he was servicing a carrier’s equipment on a monopole. The man was rescued by Pacific Gas and Electric employees who had to wait two hours until the power …
Checkered contractor loses lawsuit after two tower tech deaths
Based upon substantial evidence to support their findings, a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has kayoed a wireless contractor’s final attempt to vacate the company’s serious violations of OSHA’s General Duty Clause and $7,000 in fines they received following an accident that killed two of their employees on May 28, 2013. Both men, employees …
Services set for tech who fell from a 160-foot Oklahoma monopole
UPDATE: Nov. 7, 2016 – Services have been announced for Steven Lamar Hill, 44, of Chandler, Okla. by the Barnes Friedrich Funeral Home, 1820 South Douglas Blvd., Midwest City, Okla. beginning at 1:00 p.m., Nov. 9, 2016. Interment will follow at Elmwood Cemetery in Choctaw, Okla. UPDATE: Nov. 3, 2016 – Authorities have released the name of the deceased tower …
Cop’s shooting of tower tech had none of the outrage being shown in Charlotte death
After a Charlotte, N.C. police officer ten years ago shot and killed an AFL Network Services tower technician, Anthony Wayne Furr, 41, while he was working in a Sprint equipment shelter, the officer said he was in fear of his life and was exonerated. Sadly, following Tuesday’s killing of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott by police, Furr’s children will revisit the memories …
Wives of murdered tower techs sue the Coast Guard for wrongful death
The wives of two Alaskan tower technicians who were gunned down by a co-worker filed a lawsuit against their husbands’ employer, the U.S. Coast Guard, stating that it should have been known that their spouses’ murderer, James Wells, “was a disgruntled and dangerous employee.” The August 5, 2016 complaint by Nicola Belisle and Deborah Hopkins, is seeking over $1 million …
Tower tech who was shot by his co-worker passes away in San Antonio
Update: August 11, 2016 – A memorial service for Brandon Cartwright will be held on Tuesday, August 16 at 10:30 a.m. at Northeastern Junior College, Sterling, CO. An altercation between two tower tech co-workers on July 28 in San Antonio, Tex. sent one of the men to University Hospital after he was shot in the chest and the other to jail where he’s …
New York county fire official is killed while at tower site doing maintenance
The top fire official in Tioga County, N.Y was killed yesterday when a county pickup truck struck him while backing up, according to the county’s sheriff’s department. Tioga County Fire Coordinator John Scott, 71, of Campville, was one of several employees who were performing maintenance at a county radio tower on Carmichael Rd. in the Town of Owego when he …
State by state industry deaths analysis provides a linch pin for continuing dialogue
For 13 years, Wireless Estimator has been compiling data on industry-related fatalities, and presented that information last month to a dozen public and private safety professionals for analysis to see if there are any common threads that could be explored to reduce tower climber deaths. The only commonality, however, was that although there were 116 fatality incidents since 2003, assigning any significance based upon …
After foundations rush in, Georgia tower tech will be finally laid to rest
Services will be held tomorrow, Friday, June 24, 2016, for Kenton Seales at 12:20 p.m. at the Life Church Christian Center at 1300 Old Covington Rd., Conyers, Ga. Seales, 36, passed away on June 11 when the company vehicle he was a passenger in crashed into another vehicle that was towing a semi-trailer on I-10 in Hudspeth County, Tex. After …
Veteran tower climber, helping ham radio operators, succumbs after a fall in Arizona
Update: June 12, 2016 – Andrew Milton ‘Milt’ Jensen, 73, who died when he fell from a tower located on Mount Lemmon in Pima County, Ariz. on Thursday while volunteering his services to an amateur radio club, had been climbing professionally for a number of years and had safety training, according to a family member who announced services today that …
Kentucky fall claims the life of a West Virginia tower technician
Update: May 25, 2016 – The tower technician who died yesterday had been working on a project installing a 310-foot self-supporting tower for Appalachian Wireless. The Federal Communications Commission’s database identifies a construction completion date of May 25, 2016. Appalachian Wireless has built a number of towers recently. In March, they built one in Mud Creek, Ky. and in April, …
OSHA is readying new RF, fall protection and hoist standards
Although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had known that fall protection in the wireless construction industry has either been used improperly or inconsistently due to the high fatality rate of tower climbers, after analyzing the responses to their 38 questions on tower safety published last April, the agency has decided that it will be moving forward with revising their standards …
Ohio cell tower climber’s death wasn’t industry related
A 20-year-old man who fell 70-feet from a cell tower in Oxford, Ohio on Thursday and died, was not an industry-related fatality, according to Miami University Police Chief John McCandless, who said it was a sophomore majoring in university studies from Seoul, Korea, and Beijing, China Although a number of industry workers contacted Wireless Estimator on Friday, stating that they …
Over $13,000 in fatality citations vacated after Virginia’s OSH ignores a filing deadline
UPDATE: March 24, 2016 – Summit Tower Construction co-owner Allan Hadfield said today that although he welcomed the dismissal by a Waynesboro, Virginia Judge of six Virginia Occupational Safety and Health (VOSH) citations based upon a judicial filing technicality, following a 2013 fatality, he and his attorneys were prepared to show that his employee’s death was caused by an equipment …
