“We All Froze”: 37 Job Site Incidents That Still Give Workers Chills

Woman in male dominated field here. Was not given proper safety training or safety gear and forced to use a chainsaw to cut up wood without any experience. Was told later that the boys were betting on which body part I’d lose and instead of helping me, were sitting around laughing and waiting for a scream.

Working the oil rigs and one of the rigging lines snapped and I was inches away from becoming diced meat. I didn't quit but I will never forget that day even when I tried mentioning it at the safety meeting I was immediately silenced.

Not me, but my buddy fell off scaffolding and died. I quit the job and refuse to do it again.

Was an industrial first aid attendant and stayed with a guy that got sucked into large roller machine. All that was showing was his face.

I was sent to do waterblasting in a remote area, the site was on aboriginal grounds (which was once taken over by catholics), and every night, I would have dreams of children crying and screaming to go home.

Was doing work inside a combine harvester and i heard the "beep".

bluecollarminer:
Anytime you’re working on something and hear a start up alarm your heart drops😭.

Watching my coworker get crushed by a 4500 pound frame that fell over off the crane because crane company didn't rig it right.

i once cleaned some river. in my second week on a blue day we take the boat to go clean and after 20min wee see a silouhaite. it was a dead body floating with 2 chain on his leg. call the boss and he call the police département. was my scariest found in my entire life.

Working with high voltages, a person ceased to exist( literally no trace of him left ) because he switched a lever in the wrong direction.

Boss had a PM to test the high level switches on two 100% liquid SO2 tanks. Told his crew to go past the standard max operating level (80% of max volume) Crew asked are you sure? Boss said yup. Both tanks are full to the top. Next morning a technician comes in the morning to take sample from the lowest elevation tank. Inadvertently equalizes the levels in the tanks and proceeds to put 20mt of liquid SO2 on the ground. Nearly k**led 20 people, if it wasn’t for the quick reaction of the operators to tell people it was coming seconds before they wouldn’t have had a chance. This boss is still employed by the company and was never punished for his actions.

European plumber here, i had to go do something in a basement for quite some time and i swear on everything i love there was something or someone watching me, i heard noises coming from different directions and caught head shaped figures peaking from around corners, i never went alone in that basement after since.

I saw a man's arm get flattened when I was building roof trusses. we built on a giant table. we'd set up the trusses, bang down a corner of the spike plate and a giant roller would come by to flatten them down after. a guy left his hammer on the table when the rollers were coming and it can really mess it up so he tried to reach and grab it quick. he was laying on the table with his and didn't slide back in time, he was lucky it didn't crush his whole body. his forearm and bicep eviscerated over the corner of the truss and I was told his elbow was the only thing left, laying between. I was certified in first aid and on health and safety so I ran over but passed out immediately. I never offered to be on health and safety ever again. I don't want first aid anymore.

I was going inbetween jobs a while back, with a little previous roofing experience joined a new start business roof cleaning to get by. First day they had me on 3 different roofs with no harness or Saftey equipment I did 2 roofs and the 3rd was a 2-3story building I climbed to the top of the ladder and had to clean the gutters off the roof nearly fell off, and just climbed down called the boss and quit immediately. Drove past the building the operated from a couple months later and the company no longer operates / exists.

Worked in a copper refinery at a mine, every breath you took was burning your lungs. End of the shift was excessively vomiting and massive headaches.

I was working as a fire tech in a paper recycling factory. I had a colleague with me. We where deep in a service tunnel when he said can you smell that it's like really strong rotten eggs. Then he said never mind it's gone. Later that day we where in the office when a guy came in waering a H2S gas meter. He said the level was 1400ppm. I said what does H2S gas do? The boss said you will smell really strong rotten eggs then you wont then you'll pass out and die. 500ppm is enough to k**l you.

Worked on a home that had the second story caved in from a storm and was told before there was no asbestos… I was walking around looking at the damage (you could see dust particles floating around like snow) so I flipped over a piece of the walls from upstairs and it had ASBESTOS written on it 😐.

Not a blue collar worker, but my job deals with the aftermath of asbestos exposure. It is not fun…

Went inside a combine harvester to clean it and it started closing. thank god the model i have closes slower than usual.

Coworker calibrated a natural gas flow meter on a shutdown, followed the instructions that were laminated and zip tied to the meter. When we came back up, there was triple the gas going into the boiler than what the meter read. You could smell gas in the control room. We went to investigate and the walls on the boiler were flexing. Operators were too scared to make the call to do an emergency master fuel trip. o2 control was out of wack also. Closest to a 5 story bomb going off I’ve ever seen. Ripped that instruction set off the meter and googled the correct way.

My dad's story: he went to fix something at a slaughter house when he was starting the job, he could see all the sheep in the pen, scared. then once the job was done there was just a skip full of sheep heads :( he said the energy was horrible in that place.