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TMCNet: Cell tower safety issues arise after worker's fall

[December 10, 2010]

Cell tower safety issues arise after worker's fall

Dec 09, 2010 (The Virgin Islands Daily News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- When Wayne Christian fell about 100 feet from a communications tower on Mountain Top Monday afternoon, he was lucky to have survived.

The 24-year-old St. Croix man, who works for Choice Communications, said he was climbing the tower to do some routine work, swapping out radios, when the cable his safety harness was attached to snapped, sending him hurtling to the gravel below.

Christian did not recall much of the fall and he said details of what happened to him immediately after he hit the ground were sketchy.

He did remember Emergency Medical Technicians taking him to Schneider Hospital, where he still was Wednesday, being treated for a fractured jaw and under observation for internal injuries.

When he spoke to The Daily News Tuesday night, Christian said he recalled seeing rust on the safety-harness cable before it broke, but he also said he did not know much about cables and could not say anything more about the condition of the safety cable.

The Daily News tried to get answers to some of the questions regarding the safety and maintenance of communications towers, including who is responsible for making sure the cables are safe and secure, who is responsible for making sure employees have proper, adequate safety equipment and training, and which agencies have oversight of the dangerous job of climbing hundreds of feet into the air to install equipment on the towers.

SBA Communications owns more than 8,800 communications towers and 20 in the Virgin Islands, including the 190-foot tower from which Christian fell. The company is based in Boca Raton, Fla., and is "a leading independent owner and operator of wireless communications towers across North America," according to its website.

Calls made Wednesday to SBA Communications were not returned.

No one from Choice Communications, Christian's employer, could be reached Wednesday, although Choice CFO David Haddow said Tuesday the company had launched an investigation, and he could not comment further.

The Daily News' call Wednesday to the V.I. Labor Department, which deals with Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigations, was the first time that Labor officials had heard about the accident, and they said they would look into the matter.

To see more of The Virgin Islands Daily News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, The Virgin Islands Daily News, St. Thomas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com.

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