On of the worst days of my good friend’s life came a couple of decades ago. He had technical supervison of a nationwide group of TV stations, and a new tower was being built for a couple of them in Texas (not Houston, by the way).
He was a cautious type and had left standing orders for the tower workers not to go up on the tower under construction on windy days.
But on this particular day, they did so anyway.
The tower itself was nearly complete, but the erecting jig—called a ginpole—needed to be moved up one more level. This is a tricky operation because there is a short period where you have this 60-foot long pole weighing several tons in a potentially unstable configuration before the workers on the tower can muscle it into its new position and bolt it into place.
Well, Murphy took over that day. The gin pole bacame unstable, possibly due to the winch operator on the ground not stopping the winch on time and letting the pole rise too high to be properly stabilized by the workers on the tower. Because of the wind, it got out of hand (literally) and came loose from the hoisting cable. On the way down, it took out some of the tower guys so the tower came down.
Several people lost their lives, including all that were on the tower.
Naturally, the survivors’ lawyers went after the TV station group as well as the tower erection company. But the TV group’s lawyers were excellent; they built a solid defense alleging negligence on the part of the erection company’s workers, and won the case.
Just the same, my friend had nightmares about it for long afterward. And, on the strong advice of counsel, he would never again employ that tower company or its successors.
We had customers down, and he called me and told me the wind was too high. I said: 'fine, shut it down'.
Got yanked into a director's meeting getting yelled at by customer service and finance directors.
I told the CEO (A buddy of mine) 'climbing supervisor says it's not safe, ask your lawyer for advice'. Meeting adjourned.
The guy running the crew in the field has to have the final say, and managment has to back him.
I could cry for your friend. He did everything he could, and the contractor pushed it. I was just lucky my guys were in-house, or customer service and finance would have pushed them.
/johnny