Update: July 26, 2016 – According to crew lead Moses Wright, in a Facebook post this morning, his co-worker on a three-man crew is “alive and well”. Wright said, “It was a 20-30 foot drop and he was stopped by landing on top of our co-worker. We are not sure at this time why his safety grab didn’t grab. We …
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, …
Tower tech’s condition still critical after a safety climb failure in Texas; his rescuers are sacked
UPDATE: – April 21, 2016 – According to Troy White’s father, Mick Whitecotton, White is scheduled to undergo surgery on his left leg today. It was severely cut as the tower tech slid down a guy wire. Whitecotton said White was still in the trauma center intubated with a brace on his back. Nurses were able to allow him to stand …
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 …
FCC and DOL announce second workshop on tower climber safety and apprenticeship program
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Employment and Training Administration (ETA) have announced preliminary details of a second workshop on tower climber safety and the Telecommunications Industry Registered Apprenticeship Program (TIRAP). The first joint FCC-DOL workshop on these subjects was held on October 14, 2014. The upcoming workshop, to be …
Removing five diagonals and loosening 12 others cited for causing deaths, injuries
Four lawsuits that were filed in June against a tower owner and the contractor it hired to design and manage a structural reinforcement project in West Va. where two tower technicians died and two were injured after a tower collapsed, have worked their way from circuit court to federal court, and the defendants are alleging that it was the tower …
Court rules that AT&T will stand trial in tower injury lawsuit along with other defendants
AT&T, Inc. was denied its request last week to be removed from a personal injury lawsuit brought by Thomas Jeglum, 26, against the company in the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania after the California tower tech suffered serious injuries when he fell in 2013 from a stealth tower site in Allentown, Pa. while performing an AT&T Mobility LTE upgrade. Judge John M. …
Tech’s death in Pennsylvania is the industry’s third work site fatality in 2015
UPDATE: Sept. 28, 2015 – Visitation services for Matthew J. Vance, 37, will be held today from 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 p.m. today at the Sorge Funeral Home in Hollidaysburg, Pa. A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015, at Evangelical Lutheran Church in Duncansville. Vance, a tower technician, fell approximately 90 …
Deceased tower techs’ signatures were forged to falsely state they were W-9 contractors
A U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Administrative Law Judge has found that a Louisiana tower erector’s owners, during a hearing to vacate a $7,000 Serious OSHA fine received following the death of two of the company’s workers in 2013, purposely misled the court, fraudulently altered documents and were deceitful in a number of representations, and he denied their …
Texas climber succumbs to injuries after falling from water tower
Update: September 1, 2015: The employer of the 21-year-old Texas tower technician, Pedro Samuel Salazar, who died yesterday, Orbit Broadband, released the following statement: “We at Orbit are deeply sorrowed by this and our prayers go out to the individual and his family. There is an ongoing investigation and we are working with all those involved. Out of respect for …
Tower contractor’s owner refutes report that his worker fell from a tower
A Massachusetts contractor said that, although he had a worker who sustained jobsite injuries, his tower technician did not fall from a Crown Castle International tower yesterday in Gorham, Maine, as reported by a Maine newspaper. In a Portland Press Herald article, based upon a police ‘news release,’ an employee of Centerline Communications of Raynham, fell from the 300-foot guyed tower while …
Woman’s death linked to her boyfriend’s tower tech profession in Texas
It is not known why 28-year-old Stephanie Gurney of San Angelo, Tex. was on or fell from an SBA Communications 500-foot tower in a rural area 10 miles east of Eden on Saturday at approximately 11:15 a.m., but it is has been established, that her boyfriend, Stephen Butler, who met Stephanie in September of 2014, was a tower technician for …
Safety climb system failure seriously injures tower tech in 50-foot fall
A Kentucky tower climber who had been in an induced coma for the past 10 days had additional surgery yesterday, and this morning for the first time was able to talk, but he is unable to remember his traumatic fall off of an Ohio tower that required him to be airlifted to St. Elizabeth Hospital in Youngstown to be treated for …
RF could have been the real killer of a BASE jumper who fell to his death
Although it will not be able to be identified until a coroner examines tissue samples, there’s a strong possibility that a Michigan BASE jumper might have died, not because his parachute’s canopy didn’t open, but because he might have been unconscious before he ever had the opportunity to pull his ripcord as he fell from the 1,000-foot WLAJ-TV tower he …
Michigan tower BASE jumper is killed after chute doesn’t deploy
A well-known and highly skilled skydiver plunged to his death off a television tower yesterday when his canopy failed to open during a jump. Authorities say that Josh Sheppard, 31, was found dead at the bottom of the 1,000-foot WLAJ-TV tower in Jackson County west of Detroit, Mich. at 5:30 p.m. Sheppard, who was from the Detroit suburb of Southfield, was …
Nine front flips off of a broadcast tower is newest foolish YouTube entry
Whereas last week’s video of a tower technician climbing 1,500-feet to relamp a guyed tower almost served as a tutorial for safe 100% tie-off practices, a video uploaded Friday of a BASE jumper doing nine front flips on the way down personified that if brains were dynamite some folks wouldn’t have enough to blow their Go-Pro helmet off their head. …
South Carolina technician, 44, is 10th industry worker to die this year
UPDATE: Authorities have identified the tower technician who fell approximately 100 feet from a cell tower in Greeneville, Tenn. yesterday as 44-year-old Allen Lee Cotton of Sumter, S.C. Two of his co-workers from Central USA Wireless did not see him fall, according to Greeneville Police Officer Shawn Hinkle’s report which provided information regarding the 12:25 p.m. incident. “Mr. Cotton was …
Technician succumbs following a 100-foot fall in Greeneville, Tennessee
A tower technician fell to his death this afternoon in Greeneville, Tenn., according to Greene County EMS Director Robert Sayne, who said he was at approximately the 100-foot level when the incident occurred. Sayne did not have any additional information. An individual familiar with the worker’s death, said the tech was working on an Ericsson project for Sprint on a 197-foot …
