HIGH RESCUE workers prepare to load the injured tower technician at the base of a monopole onto a basket stretcher that was lowered through the entrance hatch and then out of a grain tower window at about 85 feet above ground level to firefighters in an aerial ladder. Photo credit: Frankfort Fire Protection
A tower tech is in stable condition after falling approximately 15 feet off a 65-foot monopole yesterday that sits atop the 125-foot tall Frankfort Grainery tower in Frankfort, Ill., a suburb of Chicago.
AN ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN? Although the landlord of this structure is quite pleased with the revenues that are brought in by multiple tenants, a safety manager says he’s dissatisfied with the site’s lack of rooftop fall protection measures and the obvious seen and unseen obstacles that could result in a slip, trip or fall.
At approximately 2:00 p.m., the Frankfort Fire Protection District received a 9-1-1 call that a tower tech had fallen and had a broken arm.
After arriving at the scene, emergency personnel initially talked to the tech on his cell phone, who informed them that he was performing work on some equipment on top of the multi-cell-site building and had fallen, severely fracturing his arm, and could not descend on his own.
Emergency workers immediately deployed a drone to get a visual on him and identify what responders would need to rescue him.
Rescuers climbed up the grain tower from inside the structure, and they began to warm the tech, who had been exposed to freezing temperatures, with blankets and hot packs and treated his injuries.
With the aid of additional emergency resources, the tech was lowered inside the tower and then moved down three levels, where they handed him out of a window approximately at the 80-foot level to firefighters in an aerial ladder on the exterior of the building.
The tower tech was transported to Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox in stable condition.
The tower site is a poster child for slips, trips, and falls
After the first rescuer exited the rooftop hatch, he anchored a cable to a secure location near the monopole to tie off to so that additional emergency personnel arriving to attend to the technician would be safe.
A safety manager for a large contractor that performs elevated work on tall Chicago buildings and other communications structures viewed the rescue photos and informed Wireless Estimator that the location was one of the more troubling work environments he had seen.
“It’s a rat’s nest of seen and unseen obstacles, such as icing and other items under snow, that could easily result in a serious injury or cause the death of a tower tech working on that roof,” he said.
The site has been stripped of its guard rails and doesn’t appear to have any immediately accessible anchorage points.
The worker’s identity, his employer, and the client they were performing services for have not been disclosed. It appears he was working alone since there was no indication of another technician on the site during the rescue.
A carrier’s antennas are about the 15-foot height that authorities said the tech fell from. It is unknown if he was tied off when he fell.
The monopole is not lamped, which would suggest that the structure is under 200 feet in height at the top, nor is it registered in the FCC’s database.
Requests to authorities by Wireless Estimator for additional information were not immediately returned.
Built in 1856, the grain elevator had been destroyed by fire over the years three times. It was rebuilt in 1987 as part of a shopping center complex and currently serves as a key communications hub.