A colleague had a heart attack and died driving to work. Another mile he would have been at his work with a few acute assessment unit doctors to deal with him.
We had a passenger die on a long haul flight I was operating once, we were rolling down the runway at the time of the incident, CPR etc was administered but he was long gone. The aircraft continued onto the destination as planned with his wife by his side. That was a long 13 hours.
Surely nobody on board was qualified to make that call? Seems at odds with any first aid training I've ever had.
Surely nobody on board was qualified to make that call?
Yeh it seems a strange decision not to flip round, I suppose it gets more complex if it needs to spend two hours getting over the ocean, dumping a load of fuel and then coming back to land.
We've had a few deaths (national company). Only one at my physical place of work (suicide) and his immediate team/colleagues were called in/supported/allowed home. Complicates things if it were a warehouse environment where you can't risk details ending up on social media before next of kin are traced (sounds like it might have taken a while to contact them in the amazon case)
We've also had a drowning, someone killed by a car that left the road onto grass, a fall from height after a structure was hit by a vehicle. I know we've also had electrocution from hv powerlines, not sure how those incidents turned out, was not told it was fatal. I'm sure there are a lot more but we only tend to hear about local ones, those that make the news, and those where safety needs to be reiterated or result in a change of procedure.
We had a teacher who was older (well my age now) taking afternoon sports, cross country, drop dead on the playing field. Kids sent home, next day was pretty much as usual.
That's when the old adage of not sacrificing everything for work as they'll replace you tomorrow without a second thought, hit home.
A few weeks later a diabetic teacher passed out in the process of opening the door. When I got there they were huddled in a corner too afraid to move the "body". It was an undignified shove to open the door. He was fine after a bit of sugar.
I was first-aider on scene when someone got badly injured working with explosives about 20 years ago - not much I could do other than reassure him and spray water over him until the paramedics arrived.
He died in hospital a few days later due to 85% burns.
There have been one or two fatalities at my current company, but none in our department/building.
I've worked for a few 'industrial' processing-type companies, so yes - although I do remember the year we got our 'nobody died in an accident at work this year' bonus, only got it that one year though...
We unfortunately have had a few over the years. Some caused by work some natural causes. Working in a global company of few hundred thousand people its kind of inevitable (the the natural ones).
The silver lining if you can call it that is we have very good death in service benefit (although pretty sure the families would prefer the individuals to a wad of cash).
We had a passenger die on a long haul flight I was operating once, we were rolling down the runway at the time of the incident, CPR etc was administered but he was long gone. The aircraft continued onto the destination as planned with his wife by his side. That was a long 13 hours.
I was on a flight where an air steward seemed to start shouting 'are you all right sir' down the aisle seemingly at me just as we were about to launch - engines were spoiling up but the wheels hadn't started to turn. He by whatever means aborted the take off and it turns out the guy sitting behind me was looking a bit grey and distressed. He apparently suffered from various heart complaints. His wife, who'd decided not to sit next to him, was reassuring the flight crew that 'he's fine this happens all the time' and to just get on with it but the flight crew refused to take off with him on board as once the they take off - as with the example above - once you start heading down the runway theres not really any turning back.
So we sat on the runway while the ambulance and paramedics came and took the guy away.... then sat waited for a new take off slot and then, as it was near midnight by now and beyond the time we would have arrived at our destination, had to wait for a new crew to start as ours were now over their hours
Thankfully nobody's ever died in my actual office, but there's been more than one customer within a gym/sports centre (we run several of those) - but even more have been 'rescued' via CPR/defib though.
The hotel had to function as normal while all of this was going on.
That reminds me of a holiday in Venezuela and the 'normality' that continued when a hotel guest passed away while in line for the all-inclusive dinner buffet. Staff covered the body with a white sheet and most folk continued to get their food, while the body lay covered in the middle of the floor. We decided to go hungry that night.
Surely nobody on board was qualified to make that call? Seems at odds with any first aid training I’ve ever had.
In the air its a legal requirement to administer CPR on an adult for a minimum of 30 minutes once the defibrillator has been attached. If during those 30 minutes the defrib continues to advise that no shock is required then CPR can be ended as the casualty has passed away.
The aircraft was laden with fuel for a 13 hour flight so landing was not an option, the commander of the aircraft and the company have to decided if it would make any difference landing. It would have taken a considerable time to dump enough fuel to get down to a safe landing weight and after 30 minutes no life was detected so the decision was made to continue.
at an old job - one of our (expat) guys in a west africa staff house didnt report for work on a saturday - which happened often after friday night beers so the lads went into the office.
Sunday - no one went in .
Monday - he was still a no show so his door was forced.
Poor fella was found slumped behind the door in his room - Heart attack - potentially since friday night/saturday morning.
Procedures were changed - every day you had to at least answer your door at bus time or it would be forced.
In the air its a legal requirement to administer CPR on an adult for a minimum of 30 minutes once the defibrillator has been attached.
I’d love to see that legislation… it sounds like a company policy or perhaps some IATA guidance that people are renaming “legal requirement”. Which country’s law? Because in general if you are within the physical jurisdiction of a country you are going to be within 30 mins of an emergency landing.
a requirement to administer cpr regardless seems dubious - what if the casualty has a well understood do not cpr request in place (older people and those with long term health issues do fly, and could board an aircraft seemingly well).
What does the law say if there is a doctor on board who decides life is extinct after 15 minutes of cpr?
Does the “law” mean that if the aircraft was awaiting a landing slot it will continue to circle for 30 mins (presumably you can’t do cpr on the final landing approach) delaying the transmission to hospital.
what’s the ”law” for children or babies?
I’m going to suggest (without having seen what this so called “law” says) that it’s much more likely it says something to the effect of “if CPR and no shockable rhythm on an adult for greater than 30 minutes there is no realistic prospect of survival and diverting to make an emergency landing is unlikely to be beneficial” (or words to that effect - doing cpr for 30 minutes just because someone thinks it’s the rules is not a dignified way to die).
Worked in a few places where people died of natural causes. Sad but given the size of the workforces inevitable. Have also worked somewhere where people were killed. That was not an experience I’d care to repeat.
My Dad (a professional musician) used to tour with several orchestras, mainly Royal Philharmonic but a few others too.
On a tour of South America, one of the musicians slit his wrists in the hotel bath. His absence was only discovered the next morning getting on the bus to go to the concert hall for rehearsals and then the hotel maid discovered the guy.
Apparently the arrangements for getting the body and an unaccompanied cello home from Brazil were far from simple...
Have had a few.
One of the guys at my first job used to sleep at his desk at lunchtime, he had a heart attack and no one noticed until lunch finished. Amazingly, that was the first death on site for about 10 years, which is pretty amazing for an industrial chemical factory.
One of my friends from way back had a spate, 5 or 6 guys over the space of about 18 months, all died in the same toilet/shower block, all over 60 years old, he was shift lead in one of the manufacturing areas at the time, and found all but one of them. Ended up taking a leave of absence after the last one and getting his MSc, so now he isn't a shift lead, and doesn't deal with people often.
At the current place i had an older colleague had a stroke while sitting about 10 m from me in the office. He died in hospital a few days later, same place a guy walking down the stairs had a massive heart attack. Was dead before the first aiders got to him.
We've had some people die doing stupid things, it's (unfortunately) the nature of certain people to think that because they are driving a fast car, they should drive fast. And we have a lot of fast cars here.
Having witnessed the clean up of a 120 mph impact between a car and some nature (no human deaths though), i leave it to fenced test tracks, comprehensive risk assessments and lots of controls.
Previous job work colleague was squashed dead in Africa by a forklift and a large machinery packing case that slid off the forks.
Current job - contractor fell off extraction system and bounced off a steel walkway, died in hospital.
Happy thread.
it sounds like a company policy or perhaps some IATA guidance that people are renaming “legal requirement”.
It's an IATA guideline
Because in general if you are within the physical jurisdiction of a country you are going to be within 30 mins of an emergency landing.
Jurisdiction is a tricky word when it comes to aeroplanes, pilots-in-command etc.
Because in general if you are within the physical jurisdiction of a country you are going to be within 30 mins of an emergency landing.
While we were within about 10 minutes of a runway the aircraft was unable to land.
what’s the ”law” for children or babies?
60 minutes.
Had a colleague collapse at work with liver failure due to excess alcohol consumption - he wore dark glasses all the time to hide his yellow eyes and reknown for his long, liquid lunches. Anyway, put on strict doctors orders regarding zero drink consumption. Signed himself out and flew out to Spain for a holiday with mates where he died of liver failure. Insurance refused to pay for his repatriation. He was a knob.
Fatal incident where someone was doing some maintenance on a large sheet metal press and hadn’t locked-out the interlocks properly and someone came along and pressed the button…
My father used to work in a steelworks and hot strip mill - deaths were almost a weekly occurrence - memorable one was a crane driver taking a piss off a high gantry and hitting a 440V supply.
Fall from height is the most common cause of work-related fatality https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/fatals.htm . The LD50 for falls from height is 48 feet (four stories) and the LD90 is 84 feet (LD is lethal dose). Contrast that with, say, cycling, using v = sqrt(gh) gives a LD50 velocity of 12 m/sec or 26.6 mph. Come to a dead stop at that speed and it can be very serious (my dead stop was at 20 mph).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00068-017-0799-1 makes for sober reading.
When I was young, I worked in a small factory, about 50 employees. One old guy had a heart attack and died on the job, he was a forklift operator so it happened outside. The factory kept running, an ambulance came and hauled him away. There was no point in shutting down the factory. The company shut down the factory and gave everyone a paid afternoon off to attend the funeral, small site so everyone knew everyone else. I don't think anybody thought they should have shut down the factory at the time, but shutting it down for the funeral was the only decent thing to de. Besides which, he was a popular guy so it was either close for the afternoon or have everybody just take the whole day off anyway.
As far as Amazon goes, I think they should have given the worker's closest colleagues the day off. Those warehouses are huge, I don't think there's much more that the managers could do other than partition off the section where the body was and keep the rest running. Shutting down the entire site is pretty unrealistic.
Had a couple die at the surgery, but it's not common.
I set up a community based glaucoma surgery unit in Wakefield in about 2014, we were open 2 weeks when this v old chap came in (he was in his early 90s) chatted to the nurses, full of beans, and very much looking forward to restored sight. Operation went well, and I was walking him back to the recovery room when he just keeled over. Turned out he'd had an MI that more or less did for him on the spot. As we're at a local GP/walk in centre we had enough staff and equipment and knowledge, but he was gone, poor chap.
I'm self-employed and work from home.
If I've died I've not been copied in on the memo.
BITD whilst working on site a few guys have fallen from scaffolding or from roofs..... Either chippies or scaffies.
No site shutdown.
Big office in the early 90's.
One bloke used to buy multipacks of chocolate bars and sell them from his desk. Died of a heart attack, no one noticed 'till someone went to buy a KitKat from him.
Used to be a care worker specialising in end of life home care for cancer patients.
Managed about 18 months before I had to quit.
It takes it out of you eventually.
MCTD- is that QEH or 1AS..?
Neither, 1US.🤣
This happened at another plant to the one i worked at, i can remember going to an induction there, and the foreman said going round and speaking to relatives is a really $h___y job. Something he never wants to do again.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/nov/10/wales
considering the size of our office (pre covid) I think we've just had the one fatal heart attack, not on my watch thankfully (im a first aider).
we run a large building in manchester with a huge open atrium that open as high as the 10th floor, i'm not looking forward to the day we get a jumper 🙁
i have worked at 2 places where people died whilst i worked ther.
in the 80's i worked at a big engineering place. we made rolling stock, sprinter trains, huge railway liquid tankers and nuclear flask containers for BNFL.
1 day, 2 blokes were working on a tanker, grinding some damaged welds out and patching em up.
theory was that the oxy pipe was leaking, and when they started grinding after lunch, the thing ignited, like a contained bomb. burned the both alive.
then in the early 90's i worked in a steel stockyard, driving cranes. was working in the next bay to a mate offloading some very large steel beams. there was a technique use for get a gap at the headboard end of a wagon, to get the chains on. crane drive was at other end. wagon drive put chains on beams, but not far enough.
he then jumped down on the inside of the wagon.
when the crane drive lifted the beams. the chain slipped off and the beams tipped over and fell on the wagon driver at side of wagon.
2 horrible incidents.
On theme of dead people on planes
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/dead-passengers-british-airways-flights-3630744
No-one at work, but we had an old lady collapse right outside the entrance; me and another first aider were called and tried CPR but it seemed pretty obvious she'd just dropped down dead (there was a doctor's surgery just up the road who were quickly called and a doctor was on the scene before the ambulance and he told us to stop fairly soon after)
the foreman said going round and speaking to relatives is a really $h___y job
I've had to do this once for a colleague - still not sure exactly what had happened but I think the boss was giving him a proper bollocking when he went grey and slumped in his chair. The boss then called first aid and once off to hospital then told me to call his wife, as he didn't feel up to it (guilt probably!)
That was a horrible phone call; "Mrs B, nothing to worry about but Dave's been taken ill, he's on his way to the hospital, can you meet us there". Especially as he was a travelling salesman visiting the main office and his wife was 200 miles away. Whenever I talk H&S to my team, I always think of that day and ask them to never give me reason to make that sort of call again.
We used to work in a big open three floor office with a central atrium. Poor guy keeled over with a heart attack in the atrium.
The beeping of the defibrillator running for so long trying to resuscitate him was sad and grim especially as we couldn't really move everyone out of their desks.
Some of the Death in Service benefits can be quite good for some .
doing cpr for 30 minutes just because someone thinks it’s the rules is not a dignified way to die
As a First Aider I was told you continue CPR until you get a response or the Pro's take over (or until you are so exhausted you cannot continue)
Also I'm pretty sure they said it's the same for the police, paramedics etc. They cannot determine death so will continue treatment until they get to A&E. Whether that's done or not I don't know, but I did see paramedics doing CPR on a lady that had quite clearly had a huge impact with a tipper lorry she had stepped in front of, and that didn't look like it had a realistic prospect of a successful outcome 🙁
On a lighter note, I do like this one
(Hmmm, it's chopped off the bit that said 'this workplace'
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A few years ago when I worked for a financial company, we had a jogger collapse with a heart attack right outside our gates. One of the security guards with very quick thinking saw him on the CCTV,sprinted out across a huge garden and massive car park with a defibrillator and saved his life. The same guy also chased down a mugger and made a citizens arrest a few weeks later - useful bloke!
My father used to work in a steelworks and hot strip mill – deaths were almost a weekly occurrence
and
This happened at another plant to the one i worked at, i can remember going to an induction there, and the foreman said going round and speaking to relatives is a really $h___y job. Something he never wants to do again.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/nov/10/wales/blockquote >A long time ago I used to ride with an older bloke who was H&S at the steel plant in Port Talbot. He stopped riding when he had a pretty major nervous breakdown.
I work in social care, so yes, it happens.
They cannot determine death so will continue treatment until they get to A&E
There's an 'it depends' on that one - paramedics can call it under certain circumstances.
The aircraft continued onto the destination as planned with his wife by his side. That was a long 13 hours.
Was he in the isle seat?
A few years ago (quite a few now) one of the 16 year lads in training at the Army Foundation College at Harrogate collapsed at the end of the inter company cross country run, so was witnessed by quite literally hundreds of his fellow junior soldiers.
He had a previously undiagnosed heart condition.
Despite the best efforts of plenty of first aid trained instructors and paramedics he didn't regain consciousness.
A couple of things remain with me from that day. Firstly trying to persuade the civilian agency medic from the med centre to come out and try and save this lads life. Despite it "not being his job" he eventually saw sense after some fairly robust encouragement.
The second was attending his funeral with hundreds of his school mates.
Some of the Death in Service benefits can be quite good for some .
I think mine is 11 x my annual salary...
If that was Rab 2014 I was on that ride, just a few miles behind. Very sad.
Involvement can be very random. One incident in Glasgow was reported by a 999 call from a passenger in a car on the M8 who saw someone jump from a window on the 19th floor of a block of flats overlooking the motorway.
No need for CPR there.
