Having completed the rope safety and rescue portions of the course we moved on to the more bookish aspect of the course. We started the morning with an introduction to wind industry. They showed us a video produced by the American Wind Energy Association. It was largely a propaganda piece. But it had some interesting tidbits, like you can run 300 homes off one megawatt of electricity. A useful bit of information. I’m suspicious of propaganda, no matter how much I like the subject of propaganda.
After the video we went into a brief history of wind. It has been utilized as a power source for thousands of years. Just in the last few decades it has been growing. We are continually reminded that the industry is about to explode. I’ll believe it when I see it.
We also discussed the advantages and disadvantage of wind. The advantages are it’s clean, it’s renewable, and it saves water. The disadvantages are it’s inconsistent, it can be noisy, it can cause flicker. This lighthearted introduction to the industry at large was followed by what we could call the “Blood On The Highway” portion of our course. When one takes driver’s education they always show lots of gruesome pictures in order to scare students into driving safely, often showing a movie called “Blood On The Highway.” I don’t want to make light of the topic however. This is something to take very seriously. Your life and the life of others is on the line.
So we started reviewing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines for a variety of topics. Before we began this, we took a pretest on OSHA standards. We were instructed not to guess. They advised, “You guess, you die.” After the test, which I left largely blank, not wanting to die, we moved into covering proper safety protocols.
One interesting thing mentioned was that OSHA and safety standards are an evolving thing. That is convenient because the wind industry itself is evolving. OSHA isn’t sure how to classify wind or handle wind. So we covered a lot of things that we would be involved with the wind industry.
First and very importantly came electrical safety. This is probably the scariest thing out there. Before I started the program I was worried about great heights and falling. Now I am scared shitless of electricity. One of the reasons I am nearly paralyzed is because of the video they showed us of the Indian man on a train. If you google “man electrocuted on train” it pops right up. Essentially a guy absentminded touches a high voltage line while strolling on the roof of a train. What happens to him is exactly what you think of when you think of God smiting someone. A big flash, a cloud of smoke, and a hunk of charcoal that used to be a man. The instructors knocked on the desk to demonstrate what he would feel like. I had trouble sleeping that night.
We shortly moved on to fall safety. This was mostly a review of topics we covered the previous week. We went on to cover Personal Protection Equipment, Power Tools, Ladder Safety, Scaffolds, and Excavations. We then took 6 to 10 question quizzes on each of these topics. While killing time after the quizzes we looked at some "Safety at work awards," people doing stupid shit including bow hunting gone awry.
After that we went on to some crane safety. Surprisingly complicated stuff, but cranes are an essential part of turbine construction. I will be giving these behemoths a wide birth especially after they showed us a picture of a guy who was crushed under a crane’s tracks. It was probably the gnarliest picture I’ve ever seen. The man was flattened and his head was elongated and you could see a white cottage cheese looking material spilling out from what used to be his head. Horribly disgusting. Stay away from cranes boys and girls.
We then moved on to moving materials and pushed through to back safety. I went home to a restless night’s sleep.
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