Just witnessed a works accident :(

Working with a workmate on a 5th floor roof, moving some stuff around on a roof and the lad i was working with was carrying a metal edged box which slipped in his hands and severed his artery in his wrist !! SOO much blood its unreal, had to get him off the roof , and down 5 flights of stairs and over to the first aid which luckily wasn’t too far away ! .. a constant flow of blood like ive never seen and dont want to see again ! .. ambulance arrived and now hes in hospital and hopefully on the mend …
Manager said i looked worse than the bloke who hurt himself and so told me to go home ! ….. i do really feel shit ! 🙁

Anyone seen one of there workmates get injured while at work ?

i hope he gets well soon.

it sounds like helped him in a very short time though so that is definitely a good thing.

Yes, never nice.
Do what you need to do and go home.
i hope everyone is ok.

Not at work but when I was living in France one of the girls had a few personal issues and slit her wrists. It was more of a cry for help then anything serious as she didn’t go very deep but still as you say the amount of blood was phenomenal – I left one of the girls trying to help staunch the flow while I went off to find help and get an ambulance. It was all resolved quickly and she was back with us a few days later. Took me a few hours to calm down afterwards though

Ohhh eeek. 😯

Erm, you need to take it easy too now you know. Funny how these things manifest themselves.

I once saw a guy chop off his right little and next finger off whilst using a circular saw without a guard on it.
Bit of a mess has to be said, I had to fish out the fingers from under the swarf catcher. This was 20 odd years ago now and on occasion I get the chills thinking about it.

Its horrible, isn’t it? I watched a steel erector fall off a silo about 100ft up, bounce off the girders and land on his head on the concrete right in front of me. I wrapped my jacket round him to try and keep him warm and got the ambulance called. Same as you: I never realised how much blood the human body can chuck out. Its staggering! My jacket was literally saturated. Threw it straight in a skip

After it was all over, and the adrenalin wore off, I went into shock in a big way. Amazingly, he actually lived

Stumpy I think I would’ve been whiter than the guy loosing loads of blood too!

A fews ago my boss dropped a circular knife on his foot. Sliced through his leather shoe and into his foot, it was only the bone that stopped the blade. I bandaged him up, chucked him in the car and took him to hospital, quite a lot of blood!

15 stitches in total and was lucky not to hit any nerves. He was back to work the following day, despite being told to rest. He nearly severed his thumb off about 5 years ago.

Spose the worst thing for me , was NOT knowing what to do or how to help !
Felt pretty helpless seeing him bleed so much ! … did first suggest him staying on the roof while i fetched help but i reckon by the time help had arrived on the roof he would of bled to death ! , so decided to walk /run down the stairs instead,good job really

Sounds like you kept it together and saved his life, shock will kick in now, Ohh, I get a bit squeamish so I gonna leave this post sharpish. Good work fella, take it easy.

Seems like the ideal opportunity to go on a first aid course ?
Hopefully you will never need to use it again, but always worthwhile knowing what to do.

Blooming heck, it was good thing he had you guys near by and you kept your heads.

My pa worked in the oil industry in the 70’s out the the middle east. Some of the stories he tells are upsetting;

Watched a chap walk into a plain prop
Found three chaps trapped in a truck with petrol dripping on them for a few days
Various arms removed in equipment
Him in two plain crashes.

Surprised he’s still with us.

Been there –
I was first aider when a chap blew himself up in an MOD test facility – we did what we could while we waited for the paramedics to turn up.
He died in hospital a week later – had 70% burns so it wasn’t unexpected.

It did mess with my head a bit – take some time for yourself, talk to people and don’t be embarrassed to ask for help, our brains aren’t wired up to just shrug these things off…
I’ve been involved with several other serious incidents and you do find yourself thinking about it from time to time.

Anyway – it sounds like you might have saved his life today – so good work.

Anyone seen one of there workmates get injured while at work ?

Thankfully no.
But I used to be the safety rep when I worked for Hanson in the quarry, and we had regular regional meetings. Once a bloke came down from one of the northern regions to talk to us about a fatality, him being the first aider, rep, and second n the scene
Basically they had a supervisor who’d been doing the job 30 odd years, knew it all, had a bit of an attitude and wouldn’t listen if someone told him to do something a different way.
He’d been on all the appropriate courses but one day they were lifting a heavy piece of machinery in the workshop, using a lift installed for the purpose. He didn’t sling the load properly (I won’t bore with the detail) and then decided to have a look underneath as it lifted. The chain slipped and the load squashed his head, killing him instantly.
This was some months previously and the bloke was clearly still badly affected by what he saw. Not nice.

Don’t forget to look after your own needs now OP. Make sure and have a chat with someone about how you feel in case you end getting some kind of delayed reaction. Maybe go out for a run or a ride and blow it off a little. And well bloody done for getting him down to first aid. You may well have saved his life. You can justifiably feel good about that much.

Ouch!

Now that you know he’s going to be OK….

Brace yourself for a ribbing tomorrow over working with you being so bad that the last feller slashed his wrists 😀

Horrible isn’t it. Well done for getting him down off the roof.

Workmate lost 3 fingers right in front of me as a 380kg roll dropped onto them, picking up the bits and putting them in a sample bag was a bit grim. But not as bad as his suffering with them in the cold & he keeps knocking them on things, the look of pain on his face is not nice.

Thankfully I missed the bloke getting chopped in half in a ribbon mixer, he took 45 seconds to die a very noisy death I’m told 🙁

Brace yourself for a ribbing tomorrow over working with you being so bad that the last feller slashed his wrists

Thought I was the only one there that wanted to slash my wrists !! … so unfair !
Could of always jumped off the roof ! … we were 6 floors up !

Spose the worst thing for me , was NOT knowing what to do or how to help !
Felt pretty helpless seeing him bleed so much ! … did first suggest him staying on the roof while i fetched help but i reckon by the time help had arrived on the roof he would of bled to death ! , so decided to walk /run down the stairs instead,good job really

You did the best thing, get him down quickly, try to keep pressure on the wound to help slow blood loss, get help and get him to hospital.
Most work-related injuries I’ve seen have involved fingers and scalpels, nice clean cuts, at least.
Although my then g/f managed to get a finger in the way of an industrial stapler while stapling some books: not so much blood, but a wire staple sticking out of her fingernail made me feel a bit queasy…

Not at work but when I was living in France one of the girls had a few personal issues and slit her wrists. It was more of a cry for help then anything serious as she didn’t go very deep but still as you say the amount of blood was phenomenal

So she didn’t take to 29ers very well then…

I jammed my fingers in a printer years ago while cleaning the rollers, just glad it was the rubber UV gloss rollers and not the proper metal flexo rollers! I’d have no hand left if that was the case.

Split a finger on my right hand wide open, have a peach of a scar. was blood everywhere, did have the initial thought I was going to lose the finger! thankfully I didn’t.

I also once dropped a table saw on my head when I was working with my dad years ago, you’d think that no possible, but it is! 😀

No wonder I started working with computers! 😀

used to work at a school, I didn’t see it happen but a kid tried to sneak off home at lunchtime over the steel fence this stuff, left his finger on the top of it. One of the teachers retrieved the finger I was just on hand with the ice bucket, bit grim – didn’t put me off my lunch or anything but if I’d witnessed it actually happening it may have bothered me more.

Working as a bike guide, I’ve seen a fair few injuries. Lots of collar-bones, which are generally not too gruesome, but a few others which do stick in the mind a bit…. double open fracture of the forearm….. “peeled” ankle (caught skin on stub of a tree branch during a crash)…… open fracture of a finger….

My old house mate worked at an engineering firm and one afternoon after a few lunctime birthday beers a colleague got his long hair caught in a machine and was decapitated.Apparently the first anyone knew was when his head rolled across the shopfloor past someone else’s machine.
Another guy at the same place got showered in molten metal after large lump of metal fell into the foundry.He had terrible burns and parts of his limbs had been burnt off.He committed suicide a couple of weeks after his release from hospital.
I’ll stick to office work thank you.

That’s a bit random, not sure I’ve ever known anyone take wheel size quite *so* seriously – and it was about ten years before *I* started bking in any case

I was stood next to guy when he got castrated, his boiler suit got caught on the shaft of a big electric motor he was cleaning (should have had it turned off), keyway on the shaft grabbed his clothes and ripped them off taking most of his danglies with them. I just got out the way and waited for the ambulance to give them directions (could see the supervisor in the mezzanine office calling the paramedics and one of the first aiders was even closer than me).

Waited outside until they carted him off as it was sunny. Tried to stand up to go back into work and nearly fainted, shock had kicked in. We did then get the afternoon off.

Whilst we’re at it, Transit pick up comes round a corner to go up the street just as a lad who’d been in the mrs’ bakery was opening his door. His hand on top of door came into contact with transit body. Cue blood curdling scream!!
Van driver got out to see what he’d hit leaving the poor fecker trapped by the two vehicles. I ran out could see the blood pumping down the door, shouted at him to reverse and free the guy, who was now two fingers lighter!

Few years ago i was working in a Centrifuge (James Bond Style) and one of our test subjects was testing out a new pressure suit for the Eurofighter Typhoon. Hadn’t got it quite fitted correctly around his wedding tackle so when we cranked it up to 9g one of the seams was sitting directly and one of his veg. Never seen someone go cross-eyed as quickly as that!

Anyone seen one of there workmates get injured while at work

Yup, sadly.

A couple never beat the clock. 🙁

…. and then youve got to do the accident report as the witness, and then get grilled over it.
Full “PPE”, floor condition, work area lighting, manual handling etc….

A few years ago a guy at work got his arm caught in a moving drive shaft, even after he pulled the estop his arm was spiraled around the shaft, i had to dismantle the gearbox and wind it back with some stillsons to free him. I was OK when doing it but apparently white as a sheet afterwards!. Not a good experience especially when you know the guy.

Yep. Never walk behind fork lifts, trucks or plant machinery.

Sat in the pub about 20 years ago, just put some tomato ketchup on my omelette and chips when the barmaid asked if anybody knew any first aid. I followed her into the kitchen where the chef had just sliced his hand open, blood everywhere, managed to staunch the flow of blood until an ambulance arrived.

Never been able to put ketchup on omelette & chips since (HP sauce is OK, ketchup on sausage & chips is fine). Strange how the brain makes connections………… 😕

Sat in the pub about 20 years ago, just put some tomato ketchup on my omelette and chips when the barmaid asked if anybody knew any first aid. I followed her into the kitchen where the chef had just sliced his hand open, blood everywhere, managed to staunch the flow of blood until an ambulance arrived

I was coping fine with this thread, but that really turned my stomach… ketchup on omelette? gross!

Reminds me of this blog from a police officer. Not workmates, but related to his work http://www.ukpoliceonline.co.uk/index.php?/topic/52841-you-will-see-that-face-in-the-small-hours-by-spaldingtyner-of-spaldingpolice/

An ex colleague used to work in a metal plating works – one of the guys there jumped into the arsenic bath…
At the end of 2011 someone jumped off the 10th floor internal atrium bridge of the building I was working in and fell 8 floors, saw him go past the window of the meeting room I was in – he took about 40 minutes to die.
I worked in an analytical chemistry lab preparing samples for gas chromatography which required removal of moisture in a muffle oven, then boiling them in nitric acid (sometimes aqua regia). One unmarked sample came in and was a near pure glycerine sample. As I was reaching into the fume cupboard to give them a swirl it blew up in my hand. I now know why they had deluge showers every 20m in the labs…

boiling them in nitric acid….a near pure glycerine sample…it blew up in my hand

excuse my crap chemistry but did I get that right? you unwittingly concocted nitro-glycerine?

Him in two plain crashes.

Surprised he’s still with us.well it’s probably the interesting crashes that will get him
<sorry couldn’t resist>

My old house mate worked at an engineering firm and one afternoon after a few lunctime birthday beers

log books only after birthday beers the old workshop manager at a mates place used to say.
oh and yuck.

Apparently a mate of ours has a sprinkler attachment to his old chap since someone at work thought it would be hilarious to poke a running electric hand drill towards his groin while he was up a ladder. Don’t think the joker intended to make contact 🙄

I (thankfully) missed the two big ones at the steelworks I used to work at; in one a slitting machine turned itself on (despite being switched off and no-one in the control room) just as a poor chap was feeding in the new steel coil for slitting – he lost his thumb and part of his hand. I happened to be at a clients that day.

I also missed a crane driver climb up onto the big beam of his crane and stand for a while as everyone watched and then deliberately jump into a 120 tonne ladle of molten steel his crane was lifting. Poor bugger.

Worked in a large mental health hospital, one of the patients splashed gloss paint in his eye, and another then tried wiping it out with white spirit, the screams as we chased him to get his eyes washed out where attention seeking.

A few years latter visited a large secure hospital, one of the inmates there pured turps over a fellow inmate and set him on fire, not nice.