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| Cleaning the front of 61 Piccadilly takes four yet still a Death Wish. |
Ladders and tables: A reader in London snapped the following photo less than an hour ago in Piccadilly, it shows how it takes four people to provide less than safe method of working at height. Now you have to assume that cleaning this restaurant window and its surround is a routine job, possibly carried out at least once a month?? Therefore there is no excuse to be using such a ludicrous access method. A small step ladder balanced on two cocktail tables!! So unstable that it takes three to hold it down. Fact is that the wrong move and the lot will go over and what they don’t appreciate is that it could easily result in a fatality… all for the want of a longer step ladder! Definitely one for our Death Wish series.
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| You might think that this is simply man on a long ladder doing a job that requires two hands? |
African ladder Death Wish: A reader in South Africa has sent us photographs of a truly radical piece of ladder application engineering. Possibly one of the craziest Death Wish entries we have seen in some time. The men are painting the church clock tower in the northern town of Mussina, (previously Messina) South Africa on the border with Zimbabwe. The first glimpse looks bad enough, the man is clearly on a long ladder at some height and trying to rub down and paint. The ladder is though longer than you might think, the one the man is on is not resting on the ground…..
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| ....However the base of the ladder is not on the ground, it is supported by this cantilever and human counterweight. |
It is in fact balanced on a cantilever arm created out of planks with a human counterweight sitting on them while ‘footing’ the ladder with a rope. If you thought that was craxy it doesn’t end there, back up a little and you see the it goes on ……
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| Step back and you can see the contraption these two have devised. |
And on ….
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| ..Although not quite, the first ladder is even longer! |
What ingenuity! The chances of this going wrong are about as high as they go, In fact we wonder which route up the ladder our man took? Did he climb the outward facing second stage? or did he clamber over the human counterweight?
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Working on a hot glass roof: Spotted on the Stratford shopping centre site in London, a man on a glass canopy who tires with his lanyard. The man was clearly charged with cleaning a glass entrance canopy before the grand opening this week, but apparently got fed up with clipping his lanyard on each time he moved. So if the glass had broken or he had slipped near the edge, he would have been a ‘goner’ and the opening put in jeopardy.
In the words of our correspondent : “Whilst working at the large new shopping centre in Stratford London I spotted this guy doing an unbelievable act of cleaning a glass canopy without being clipped-on. At first he was clipping on to the supporting steelwork, but got quickly bored with that and in the end carried on walking in and out of the building opening onto the glass without securing himself.
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In this scenario the cost is often the least important - it is the effort and time it takes. However in spite of that very few of us would go to the extreme that the man in our photo has gone to. He has stacked the table on top of the two benches that go with it, added a couple of decorative concrete blocks and then perched his step ladder on top of it all and finally with a big stretch he can reach whatever it is he is after. Whether he survived to do it all again we don’t know, one thing is for certain the chances of falling are exceptionally high and even from this height the fall could be fatal or almost worse he could end up a paraplegic.
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This example of working at height sent in by a reader from Holland most definitely qualifies as a Death Wish. It shows a window cleaner working on the third floor of city centre building, around six or seven metres up, he is balancing on the narrow window ledge. At first glance you might wonder how he got to where he is, unless he climbed out through the window? Look a little closer and you can see his ladder to his right! He has clearly stepped off the ladder onto one ledge then moved on to the other windows.
This is by far and away one of the worst examples we have seen in quite some time. It breaks all of the Dutch regulations on working at height, but worse than that it is suicidal. We often see people doing stupid things, however as long as they are good climbers and very aware of the risks they are taking are unlikely to have an accident. In this case though the chances are ridiculously high, particularly the step from the ladder to the first ledge and worse still the manoeuvre back onto the ladder. Although he does appear to have placed the ladder up against some sort of overflow spout, which will at least help prevent the ladder from side slipping - the most common ladder accident.
It is always curious to see this happening in sophisticated markets, the Netherlands is arguably the world’s most highly developed access market with more lifts and alloy towers per head of the population than any other country. We know of window cleaners in Amsterdam who own their own self-propelled boom lifts. Aerial lifts of all kinds and scaffold towers or suspended platforms are available to rent on almost every street corner. And yet you come across jokers like this? The series shows how many people there are still to be converted to efficient and appropriate forms of access equipment and provides excellent material for safety trainers.
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Working at height? There are many ways these windows could have been worked on that would have been safe, faster and easier. Spotted in a London street.
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| Can you spot our man? |
Spotted in a northern German town this weekend a man cleaning windows precariously - the man stands on the ledge three tall storeys up and keeping his head inside the frame ..one assumes for stability … he reaches outside to clean the windows. A slip a trip and he could easily land on a tourist or shopper below.
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Spotted, two men working on a roof in Leeds, UK, they had climbed a long ladder clambered onto the roof and were working on the glass skylights. At one point one other men actually climbed onto to glass to reach a certain point. No apparent safety equipment was in use.
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Another day and several readers sent in more pictures of crazy people with a death wish. Today’s example comes from a reader in Germany which snapped this window cleaner earlier this year in his home town. The man climbs up his ladder well beyond the point he should, then transfers from the ladder to the window ledge which is wide enough for half his foot, so a tip toes job this one. He then shifts sideways to the far window, and holding on with one hand starts cleaning the upper window panes which he can just reach at a stretch.
Oh... & if you're working on a construction site - don't forget your hard hat...
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