Posted on 01/30/2014 2:01:02 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Longview, Wash. (CBS SEATTLE) – A Longview man is recovering from serious injuries after he was trapped and sent through a shredding wood chipper machine at work.
Much of Frank Arce’s body has been shredded and crushed after he climbed into a turned-off wood chipper machine to retrieve an object stuck in the bark-shredding device – something practiced by him and his co-workers at the Swanson Bark and Wood Products Company, KATU reports. However, someone was not aware that Arce was inside the barrel-sized machine, and the spikes and claws inside the device were turned back on with him inside.
Arce heard the machine click back on, but he knew it was too late for him to escape.
“Actually going through the machine itself wasn’t the worst part about it,” he told KATU on Wednesday from his hospital bed at PeaceHealth SW Washington Medical Center. “What was the worst part (was) the not knowing what was going to happen.”
Arce’s injuries are severe, and he is expected to remain in the hospital for at least the next few weeks. Arce sustained a broken pelvis, seven broken ribs, a shattered ankle, bruised liver, broken leg, a collapsed lung and a deep cut that runs the entire length of the back of his body. The cut was so deep it crushed his knee, and he remains on a heavy dose of pain medication at the hospital.
He remained conscious throughout the ten-second shredding.
Arce has remained very positive about the incident, saying his co-workers’ training allowed him to receive care quickly, and he was even sharing jokes and smiling with friends and family at the hospital.
“There was a thought (that I was going to die) but it was more like something was telling me I wasn’t going to die that day,” he told KATU. “I felt I had a lot of angels out there with me that day – a lot of people looking out for me.”
The human resources representative for the Swanson Bark and Wood Products company said that the company will be paying 100 percent of his medical bills. And although the Washington State Bureau of Labor and Industries is investigating the incident, KATU found that both state and federal regulatory agencies have found no workplace problems with the company in the past.
Lockout/Tagout is your friend.
Failure to do that, or remove a tag that wasn’t yours, was a firing offense where I used to work. I wonder if their insurance covers stupidity?
That guy wins this week’s “Luckiest Man in the World” award, and he is my current front-runner for both the monthly, and yearly prizes.
I guess it will. I should have read the whole thing.
I’ll bet that if they didn’t have a LOTO procedure in place before, they do now.
Lockout/Tagout is your friend.
BTTT
The industrial sized barrel if you please, doc!
That’s the first thing that crossed my mind. :[
Frank Arce faired much better.
It does not have to be formal and complicated, just some common sense.
In this set-up, it could be as easy as a key/plug on switch. Take that with you if you enter the shredding machine.
So he went through the pressure rolls. If the thing was running fully, he wouldnt be here to talk about it.
In Seney Mich years ago, a mans son went through one. He ended up in the chip van. I wont say what was left of him.
Ouch.
I worked in a sawmill. I saw a wood chipper that could eat 20 foot logs 18 inches in diameter in 2 or 3 seconds.
It took almost 2 hours for it to stop spinning after cutting the power.
You would think that he'd have made sure of that. Perhaps next time.
I admit learning he survived his injuries thinking “that isn’t a very good chipper...”
Arce has remained very positive about the incident, saying his co-workers’ training allowed him to receive care quickly, and he was even sharing jokes and smiling with friends and family at the hospital.
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Well. I’m glad he’s feeling so “chipper” about his experience.
(ba doom shish!)
He didn’t lose any limbs.......
Yeah, I know the feeling - it’s called an “Ohnosecond”, like when you click on your mouse button on a file deletion you didn’t want to do. It’s probably like that when you’re about to go through a wood chipper too. Or stronger.
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