Dustin Boudreaux
“This was somewhere 15 years ago, and we had done everything that we had to do to set the job up correctly. We followed all the procedures. We prepped everything.
Everybody was knowledgeable about everything that they were going to do. We were doing everything right. And just to say, how quickly it changes, we had one split second, where a guy got his hand, just his pinky, in a bad spot... and it was just a split second, just a quick snap, and a man on the bottom moved a ladder cage that we were trying to install and that thing dropped about an inch and a half. And it weighed probably 500 pounds. So I mean, all of that came down on his finger. He snatched his hand back and his gloves stayed there. And I was sitting at the bottom, watching him. I had already flown this up to him with a crane. I was disconnected, I was sucked in, I was getting ready to break down, but I was waiting on somebody to spot me, so I was watching him. And in that split second, he snatched his hand back and I just saw his shirt turning red. His glove was still between the ladder cage and the hand rail. He got into the man lift and came down to the ground by himself, just bleeding. He had lost his finger from the first joint all the way to the tip. It was still in the glove up in the air. And it happened so quick that the guy at the bottom was trying to say, ‘watch yourself’. But just by putting his hand on the ladder for that quick second, that slight pressure made it shift and it dropped. And I think that guy that got his finger removed was out of work forever, because they were worried about infections because it had broken through the bone and they amputated the finger. That right there can just show you how quick it can change. It gives a new perspective to everything that you look at when you're in the field. So, through the years I've been supervising operators, regular workers... And the thing that I try and tell them every time is, it doesn't matter how long you've been doing this. I do this, I've done it for over 20 years. Every time I go out there to do a job, I look at it like it's the first time. I go through it, step by step. I don't want to become complacent because just that quick (claps), I watched that man lose his finger.
And it was just an inch and a half and 500 pounds. That's not a lot of distance. That's not a lot of weight compared to a lot of things we do. But just that little bit, and that short time and that short distance changed that man's life forever. Now he's missing a part of him. Now this is time he's going to miss from anything else he can do to provide for his family. It's so important to follow all your procedures, to know your safety, to know your task, to make yourself as aware of it as you can. So that not only do you get to go home every day with every little piece of you, but so does everybody else you're working with. That's it.”