I've fallen from about 16 feet up. Walked right out the end of a scissor lift. Had a stick of 6" pipe in my hands,
wrasslin' (we call it "spearing") that thing into a hanger when I needed just onnnnne moooore step backwards
to get the balance right.
Oops. Forgot to put up the safety chain on that end of the lift, stepped right off of it...
….followed by the pipe, just like when Wile E Coyote goes off a cliff.
I hit the concrete like a sack of cement.
All of my desperate clawing at the undercarriage of the lift on the way down was for naught.
A bunch of other workers on the site heard/saw the commotion and came running over, hollering
and asking if I was all right.
I got up slowly and rubbed my sore shoulder and knee, which took the brunt of the fall; nothing broken,
no concussion, none of that jazz.
Dudes' eyes got real big. They kept looking up at the lift, then back at me in amazement.
Lots of "you ought to be dead" comments, stuff like that.
I just shrugged and said "God has a sense of humor".
Fortunately, the pipe had caught in the hanger on the other end and stopped falling before it got down to me on
the concrete floor below. It swung like a Tarzan vine over my head like it was taunting me.
Figured out how to bring the lift down using floor controls, then went back up and got that #$%#$% pipe hung.
I was sore for a couple days, but not much else other than pride was hurt.
I don't like heights much at all. Looking over the side of the roof of a building gives me the vertigo.
On the other hand, ladders and lifts I can work off of just fine.
Go figure.
