scariest moment at work

[nickblake]

Come on guys you must have had one here mine : working on lighting conductors at a castle ,not the one on the island the other one not saying where , replacing damaged sections of the tape beautiful sunny day cut it out put in a new piece bolt together test and jobs a good one move on to the next , i was working at the top of the tower strapped out the damaged area of rod ,basically a large jump lead , cut out the damaged bit just bolting it back together and there was a huge flash of lighting, ill tell you ,youve never seen people run so fast ,that wasnt due to the lighting but due to the noxiouse pong that came from me lol boy did it put the willies up me never did it again with out me rubber gloves on i can tell you

 

[Lofty]

Hi,
I did post this a while back but working in an old (Georgian) farmhouse that has been empty for god knows how long. Put hand under floorboards in attic to pull light cables through and put hand straight into occupied rat's nest. Think I produced same pong LOL. Rats went one way I went the other. Pest controller called in to clear building.

Lofty.

 

[rocker]

Kneeling in a cupboard with the acrid smell of my own toasting flesh deep in the nostrils, praying it is going to let go......

 

[SirKit Breaker]

Mines not electrical, but way back in my Aircraft days i always ended up getting the s888 end of the stick after engine changes. The fuel flow meters needed setting up on both engines, they are under the engine cowling, and it can only be done with the engine running at full power. It is very scary when you are trying to turn a very small screw with a very long screwdriver with a torch in your mouth whilst holding the engine cowling up and a bloody great propellor is spinning at about 14000 rpm 4 feet away from your ear. The other scary job was emptying the pressurised bog system after a 10 hour flight with a couple of hundred passengers, if you didnt get the boss on and locked properly to empty it could blow off and dump a few hundred pounds of other peoples dung on your head and everywhere else, it never got me but i have seen it happen more than once..........

Happy days.

Cheers...........Howard

 

[The Cavalry]

mine is none electrical as well. Sitting slumped in an arm chair when all of a sudden I am lifted out and thrown on the floor by an explosion. It was when the americans were blown up by a freak scud hitting their warehouse in Dahran during the first Gulf War. left a brick wall behind me!!

 

[Phil]

a few years ago a 230v circular kicked back when doing the floor boards when it hit a nail. it missed my inner thigh by a couple of centimeters as i kicked back and ran backwards. that great safety thing on the handle was no dam use as i grabbed it harder like you do when something comes towards you

 

[Sintra]

Mine was watching a colleague tipping a scissor lift when he was about 6M up. Watching it come down was as if it was happening in slow motion.

 

[Jabbajaws]

I was working in a bingo hall once, on the bar when one of the beer pumps, that circulate the lager began making a funny noise. I 'had a look' and decided straight away that it was the carbon brushes (this is when l thought that l was an electrician, but was really just young and stupid).

As the bar was busy and l was responsible for maintaining the cellar at that time, l decided to take out the existing carbon brushes and put the new ones in, without turning off the pump first.

Looking back now, l just cannot believe how utterly stupid this action was. I didn't even know what a carbon brush was back then, least of all that they conduct electricity. I thought it was some kind of brake to slow down the motor, when l took one of them out, expecting to see bristles and found metal instead.

As l put one of the brushes into it's spring loaded slot, l had my finger on the spring, as l was screwing the plastic end cap back on and was also leaning on a metallic beer keg, situated on the damp, 'covered in lager everywhere floor'.

Needless to say,

I NEVER EVER DID THIS AGAIN...

 

[truckster]

I was fitting a fire alarm in a local engineering works and as the workshop was full of stuff it was a nightmare getting round the walls. One part of the route had an enormous galvanised tank that was about six feet high and about eight feet by four. Full of water and no way to move it so I balanced on the edges as I clipped the cable round. Sometime later the factory h and e bloke turned up and really tore a strip off one of the workers. I asked him what it was all about and it turned out that the big metal tank should have had a lid on, why? i said, in case someone drowns? They'd be lucky to drown the worker says, that tank is full of chemical cleaner at about 200 degrees, it's for cleaning the castings. This bloke had watched me walking round the edges and not said a bleeding thing.

 

[Kamikaze]

Back in the day when I was still a lad. I was on a job in London when the electrician in charge suddenly died of a heart attack whilst at work. Well none of us apprentices had ever seen a dead person before or knew what to do with one. So in our infinite wisdom we decided to load him into the back of the van and drive him back to the yard. It didn’t half freak me out driving around with a corpse in the back.

 

[millwall ken]

Mines not electrical, but way back in my Aircraft days i always ended up getting the s888 end of the stick after engine changes. The fuel flow meters needed setting up on both engines, they are under the engine cowling, and it can only be done with the engine running at full power. It is very scary when you are trying to turn a very small screw with a very long screwdriver with a torch in your mouth whilst holding the engine cowling up and a bloody great propellor is spinning at about 14000 rpm 4 feet away from your ear. The other scary job was emptying the pressurised bog system after a 10 hour flight with a couple of hundred passengers, if you didnt get the boss on and locked properly to empty it could blow off and dump a few hundred pounds of other peoples dung on your head and everywhere else, it never got me but i have seen it happen more than once..........

Happy days.

Cheers...........Howard

Howard mate, would these aircraft days be whilst a Crabbie???

 

[nickblake]

Back in the day when I was still a lad. I was on a job in London when the electrician in charge suddenly died of a heart attack whilst at work. Well none of us apprentices had ever seen a dead person before or knew what to do with one. So in our infinite wisdom we decided to load him into the back of the van and drive him back to the yard. It didn’t half freak me out driving around with a corpse in the back.

sort of happened to me working with some shop fitters we stopped for a panad (tea break ) and a guy just died whist haveing his brew sat there eys wide open holding his mug we didnt even know he'd passed away till he didnt move when we got up to go back to work

 

[Jabbajaws]

Now thats just plain freaky Kamikaze. I would have had to have walked back to the yard on that one, im afraid...

 

[Kamikaze]

Now thats just plain freaky Kamikaze. I would have had to have walked back to the yard on that one, im afraid...

What all 185miles? It was scary but not that scary…lol

 

[Daveyboy]

Was not expecting it!!!!








Or when I nearly cut my thumb of with a stanley knife

 

[Paul.M]

What all 185miles? It was scary but not that scary…lol

You drove 185 miles with a dead workmate in the back?????

 

[Kamikaze]

What’s worse is, none of us had a licence. You can not believe the amount of grief our gaffer had about the whole affair.

 

[Paul.M]

What’s worse is, none of us had a licence. You can not believe the amount of grief our gaffer had about the whole affair.

I'm not surprised!

How old were you all? 12!

 

[Kamikaze]

I'm not surprised!

How old were you all? 12!

It just proves that the brain really doesn't need blood to work. It just needs to be kept wet.

 

[Cyberprog]

I'm surprised nobody suggested giving him a jump start!

 

[RWJ]

I had a fairly scary moment yesterday..

The alarm guys were doing an install on a new shop.. I was sent to install, test & commission the two radial circuits they had brought to the board (old Wylex re-wireable).
The front was already off the 6 way board we were going in to ,I was pulling and prodding some cables going into the another board....

BANG! massive flash and a bit of molten metal went up me sleeve.

All the shop fitters looked, pointed and said some stuff in Polish (non spoke english)...

I was then contemplating what had happened... (I thought for a second I might have even taken the main fuse out!)

Then there was a shout from Yako (alarm guy) who had been in the basement drilling a wall to pass some cable through......
He'd only drilled through a cable concealed in the wall, which was going diagonally.

My simple job soon turned into a nice hack plaster off the wall and joint the cable.. We also noticed some junction boxes in another part of the shop where someone else had obviously (due to the scorched wall) done the same.

 

[BOROROBBO]

working on a MEWP extended to full height and the lad stood next to me decided to show me how stable they were by rocking backwards and forwards. i swear wheels were leaving the floor at one point!

 

[pinkfish]

Used to be the leader of the monkey tree gang on our estate; 8 years old.
We had many dares that had to be fulfilled b4 you became a member.
One in particular was jumping of a 10 ft wall and grabbing a branch at same height 5ft away.

Me and bro, aged 20 odd going to local rip off shop to get a white lightning, found same said wall,
with same said branch..........

On taking the leap I easily grabbed the branch and as my legs swooped to the horizontal .......CRACK !

I just remember flash backs of bro helping me back home and sitting there with my Mum and Uncle; Saying stuff
like...... I feel safe here.... but who are you? Where am I?

2 broken ribs
1 fractured wrist
1 broken finger
and concussion !

Happy Days :0)

 

[millwall ken]

Back in the day when I was still a lad. I was on a job in London when the electrician in charge suddenly died of a heart attack whilst at work. Well none of us apprentices had ever seen a dead person before or knew what to do with one. So in our infinite wisdom we decided to load him into the back of the van and drive him back to the yard. It didn’t half freak me out driving around with a corpse in the back.

Don't suppose that you stopped off for a pint and some scoff on your way back did you? I can see it now, driving up the motorway listening to hard rock music, and when you get back to the yard and ask the govnor 'what shall we do with him?' LOL

 

[Kamikaze]

The thing was, I flooded the engine because I wasn’t used to the manual choke & couldn’t get the hang of the clutch so one of the other lads drove the van. Of cause when we got back the police were called and we spend a couple of hours in separate cells while we waited for our parents to pick us up and got formal cautions on the way out. As luck would have it, we never got the idea to try and jump start him with an improvised cardiovascular contraption. Can you imagine the fertilizer we would have been in then? But your spot on about the hard rock music and we should’ve stopped off for a bite to eat. I was starving by the time I got back home.

 

[nikmet]

Don't suppose that you stopped off for a pint and some scoff on your way back did you? I can see it now, driving up the motorway listening to hard rock music, and when you get back to the yard and ask the govnor 'what shall we do with him?' LOL

Gotta be ACDC "Highway to hell" on full volume as you skid to a stop in the yard :-D

 

[Kamikaze]

I think it was “Wheels of steel” by Saxon if my memory serves me right. :biggrin:

Went to a wedding reception last Friday night and got reminded of this story because one of the lads that was with me that day was there. According to him I said “We'll just leave this here” and tried to run off. His wife’s jaw dropped when we were talking about it. She thought he had made that story up…lol

Oh the good old days. How I miss them! :yes:

 

[Geordie Spark]

Back in the day when I was still a lad. I was on a job in London when the electrician in charge suddenly died of a heart attack whilst at work. Well none of us apprentices had ever seen a dead person before or knew what to do with one. So in our infinite wisdom we decided to load him into the back of the van and drive him back to the yard. It didn’t half freak me out driving around with a corpse in the back.

That reminds me of when I worked for a builder & used to drive the van with him in the passenger seat.

He wasn't dead, but for what use he was he may as well have been !!!

 

[drew35]

A gang of us were rewiring a car garage and we had a 5 watt apprentice with us. The garage was still being used so we were all working around each other, chaos. While I was replacing sockets along a wall in front of a four post ramp, there was sudden shouting and smashing of glass, I turned around to see a car heading off the ramp in my direction only a few feet behind me.
The apprentice was playing with the buttons on our scissor lift and not even looking at what he was doing. He had positioned it just underneath the end of the four post ramp, the ramp was about waist height. The scissor lift had lifted the back end of the ramp up and the car rolled off. No stops on the front of the ramp so off it came! A manger in the office saw it happening and banged so hard in a panic on the glass that he put his fist through it.
I jumped out the way just as a car crashed into the metal workbench I was just leant over. It crushed the bench, did a serious amount of damage to the Land Rover, and my pants! The company's insurance had to pay out, and 5 watt was no more!

 

[cogsey133]

Don't know about the scariest but this one was quite amusing. We were working all hours possible on the London underground carriages in rosyth dockyard and i mean all hour 18 hour days three shift system so everyone was tired and downright grumpy and indeed not very sociable toward each other. Anyway one night one of the carriages was to be moved, to do this the under carriage sat on a special cradle with stops on to stop it rolling then it was moved by a hovair set up (think hovercraft); But because of one thing and another the stops were off and the carriage started rolling down the workshop. As you can imagine bodies started running away from said disaster except the smallest guy in the place who started to run toward it and tried to put his shoulder on it to stop the runaway. Next thing we see is two large lads with and end each shifting him out the way and him still insisting he could stop it on his own.

It was so surreal it was hilarious and his name of mighty atom stuck since, luckily no one was hurt on that evening

 

[grantr37]

Come on guys you must have had one here mine : working on lighting conductors at a castle ,not the one on the island the other one not saying where , replacing damaged sections of the tape beautiful sunny day cut it out put in a new piece bolt together test and jobs a good one move on to the next , i was working at the top of the tower strapped out the damaged area of rod ,basically a large jump lead , cut out the damaged bit just bolting it back together and there was a huge flash of lighting, ill tell you ,youve never seen people run so fast ,that wasnt due to the lighting but due to the noxiouse pong that came from me lol boy did it put the willies up me never did it again with out me rubber gloves on i can tell you

fraid rubber gloves won't do you any good

 

[Bobster]

I've had a few scary moments.

I think the two that will stick with me the longest are:

Being in the substation when a 2Mva 11kv/3.3kv failed, all the circuit protection worked as it should so no fire or explosions.

The noise of it roaring has haunted me, I couldn't get out of the sub as I'd of had to run past the failing tx. Let me tell you 3-5seconds, of that roaring away and no place to run was horrible.


The other one was working on an overhead crane when the brake on the cable drum shattered, it dropped the 4ton bucket a good 40feet. That made a bang.

 

[cogsey133]

Now guys if you want the scariest here it is. On the same job mentioned in my other post i was sitting down cutting kopex and being so tired well you just know the knife slipped. As a result i have a nice 3 inch scar about 3 inches away from my crown jewels....what a lucky escape that was or my family allowance would have been drastically cut!

ps i was the fourth guy that night sent to hospital with a knife wound and thats my work place!

 

[jumpin jax]

I worked in a boatyard in my former life and was the crane driver, i had got on to the owner telling him the crane was knackered( old 7.5 ton coles crane with lattice jib), any way was lifting a freshly painted boat from the shore into the water and the jib lifting gear failed internally and the jib came crashing down onto the boat crushing the cabin in. This all happened in slow motion and could not do a thing about it, insurance paid out for repairs to the boat.

 

[Guest111]

my scariest one was when a young lad ran onto a factory yard I was working on,rapidly followed by 8 big lads in a car hell bent on killing him.there was only me and a german shepherd to prevent mayhem,oh happy days as a dog handler.

 

[grantr37]

I was speaking to an old sparky who's retired, see him in the pub now and then, he told me about a substation back in the mid seventies where there were 4 people working inside and a bit of equipment (filled with highly flammable oil that I'm sure is long banned/phased out) exploded and made the whole inside of the concrete shed into a furnace in 2 seconds flat...they got roasted into something resembling granulated coffee judging by what he said.....

 

[Cyberprog]

my scariest one was when a young lad ran onto a factory yard I was working on,rapidly followed by 8 big lads in a car hell bent on killing him.there was only me and a german shepherd to prevent mayhem,oh happy days as a dog handler.

It's always interesting when you add a dog into the equation. They know if they mess with it, the dog will eat one of them. But which one? That's the dilemma. And usually the handler's are fairly well built chappies, so that's two of the 8 which will be in trouble... the odds start drawing in...

 

[Paul.M]

It's always interesting when you add a dog into the equation. They know if they mess with it, the dog will eat one of them. But which one? That's the dilemma. And usually the handler's are fairly well built chappies, so that's two of the 8 which will be in trouble... the odds start drawing in...

Phil's not the biggest of blokes but I assure you that he would have taken down more than one of them lol.


No way near what you guys are posting up but yesterday whilst on the top of a ladder using my side cutters to strip 4mm t+e and they slipped off the cpc and I smacked myself straight in my face and bust my nose lol. Blood everywhere, it was a good hit. Got off the ladders and went outside to bleed in the drain just as the office next door was finishing for the day and loads of people walking out of the door looking at me bent over with loads of claret flowing from my snoz. God only knows what they thourght, it was funny but my nose still hurts now and I've ruined my favorite Caterpillar t-shirt.

Could have been worst, could have fallen off the ladder. At least I can laugh about it

 

[Sparky Ninja]

I got held hostage at knife point when doing a normal night call out once working for the council.

We were on a call-out rota in teams with 1 of each trade, and I was teamed with a multiskiller - so he did plumbing, locksmith and glazing.

We had a call to a block of flats/bedsits which were filled with drug addicts - and it was sited right in the middle of the town centre. The job was to help someone in who lost their keys, so it was the other guys job, but due to the nature of the location we had to go in pairs.

Turns out the guy had been kicked out of his own pad by some dealer chaps and so when we broke back in it all kicked off with us 2 standing in-between 5 guys.

I don't remember much about what was shouted and discussed but I do remember the state of the place, and the smell

:ack2:

 

[kingeri]

I was present during an armed robbery at a large computer retailer, was only there to service the fire extinguishers. Four guys with swords, hammers etc. hit the cash collection guys. The money box exploded and I, along with the bad guys and several other folk, got covered in horrible dye. Felt like a criminal for a while after that!

 

[Kamikaze]

It's always interesting when you add a dog into the equation. They know if they mess with it, the dog will eat one of them. But which one? That's the dilemma. And usually the handler's are fairly well built chappies, so that's two of the 8 which will be in trouble... the odds start drawing in...

A game of Russian roulette with a german shepherd, and the dog wins. I like it! :yes:

 

[Thefailsafe2012]

Pretty pale in comparison to all the previous posts, but about a year of being on the tools I was tasked with fitting some really expensive outside lights. Big ol' brass things with a thick glass cover. After being explicitly warned about not over tightening the glass cover screws I was really carefully doing quarter turns until I was happy that it was securely on. Took a step back to admire my achievement only to hear a loud clunk and see a huge crack right down the middle of the glass, then it was a long walk back to the boss to sheepishly surrender.

Also I had climbed up to a pretty decent height on an extension ladder to give the boss some stuff, as I got to the top he leant over the and showed
me what he used to do when he was a scaff and pushed the ladder out an arms length, I hung on so tight me knuckles nearly burst through the skin!