History, Politics And Current Affairs

So my work week had a bit of an unexpected twist in the form of an accident that happened to one of my colleagues at work. Since I work at a logistics site that among other things has got various forklift types in operation in a large warehouse setting an accident is always a possibility, but we’ve been spared from the more serious kinds in the past.
This monday morning however I was having a quick chat with a colleague as another colleague, not necessarily known for his speed, came running around a corner in a frenzy exclaiming ”X is hurt” and couldn’t really get anything else out. Okay, so that’s not a great sign I thought. Followed him back to where he came from and for a second there I thought ”X”, one of our forklift operators, was dead as I’m greeted with the sight of the man laying on his back on the concrete floor arms and legs spread out, mouth open and eyes staring emptily into the ceiling. Then he made a slight sound and I switched to thinking ”not dead, but is he dying?” Where he was lying was right at the beginning of our high stacking warehouse part, and he often operates the high stackers that go up 15 meters in the air so an immediate concern was that he’d fallen out of one of them into the concrete, which would have been very bad. After some investigation along with other attending colleagues, and while calling an ambulance, I managed to determine that the injuries was to his legs which was a major relief as I figured he was probably not in an immediate danger of crashing, and me having to perform CPR. There was also not much we could do for him immediately as there was no external bleeding, so I switched focus to opening up a suitable ingress route for the ambulance crew and arranged guidance for them. Police arrived first though, followed by the ambulance.

As it turned out what had happened was that he had been operating a more run of the mill pallet stacker at the time: He had been driving it behind another such one which had been loaded with a low pallet. These are driven in reverse as it is considered too dangerous to have a pallet in front of you for visibility reasons, might run over someone that way. In this case however the first stacker unexpectedly stopped, which our unfortunate ”X” did not observe in time to stop. What happened then was that he slammed into the pallet that the first stacker was loaded with at speed, which impacted his lower legs and snapped both of them. As of yesterday he was still in the hospital following surgeries, though his left leg is less bad off than the right one and he may be able to use that to support himself with crutches relatively soon, possibly avoiding a lenghty spell in a wheelchair. He’s got a generally positive attitude and is in good spirits though.

I guess all well that ends at least better than it could have. Took a while for my initial adrenaline rush to wear off on Monday though!

He got lucky

jemhouston wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2026 11:23 amHe got lucky

Oh yeah, could have been much worse.

When you get dragged into the inevitable investigation, maybe suggest some sort of brake light thingo attach to the load? It doesn't need to be wired in, battery operated with a g sensor and ideally a speed sensor, red light comes on when slowing and flashes when stationary.

First, to you, as Craig would day “good drills that man!” Excellent scene management, keeping calm, and rapidly pivoting to multiple different courses of action as the situation demanded.

If I had to be picky, at least here in the US, we’re trained to send someone to get the AED if CPR is needed, so you should have embraced with unholy glee the prospect of zapping said coworker if needed. But, again, that’s being picky :p.

Otherwise, it does sound like a break light is needed. And, of course, making all involved to fill out the workers comp forms by hand, in pen, in triplicate, as suitable disciplinary action to ensure they never get hurt on the job again.