Fatal bandwidth: 6 cell tower deaths in 5 weeks
There’s a price to pay for the wireless networks we take for granted.
On May 16, Jonathan Guilford, 25, of Fort Payne, Alabama, was working on an AT&T UMTS (3G) project in Haubstadt, Ind., when he fell to his death from a 200-foot tower, according to a report in Wireless Estimator, an online newsletter that covers the communications construction industry.
Falls from high towers are not unheard of in this business. But for more than four months — between Dec. 5 and April 11 — the industry was fatality free.
Then in April, as Wireless Estimator president Craig Lekutis notes with alarm, five workers fell to their death from mobile phone towers in the space of 12 days. Guilford’s death in May was the sixth this year.
Accidents like this often come in spurts, says Lekutis, an industry veteran with 27 years experience. There were 10 fatal falls from elevated structures of all kinds (including TV, electrical and water towers) in 2007, and a record 18 in 2006. But this year’s concentrated run of cell tower accidents, he says, was extraordinary.
The toll, as recorded by Wireless Estimator:
- April 12: A 34-year-old cell tower technician from Oklahoma man died after falling 150 feet from monopole antenna in Wake Forest, NC. It was the nation’s first death in 2008 of a communications worker falling from an elevated structure.
- April 14: A tower worker employed by Cornerstone Tower of Grand Island, Neb., fell to his death in Moorcroft, WY.
- April 15: A 38-year-old technician finished tightening the bolts on a guyed wireless tower in San Antonio, TX, “sort of lean[ed] back a little,” according to witnesses, and fell 225 feet to his death.
- April 17: North Carolina suffered its second cell tower fatality in a week when a 46-year-old Chesapeake, VA, man fell from a communications antenna in Frisco, NC.
- April 23: A Griffin, GA, man died from extensive head and chest injuries after falling 100 feet from a communications tower near Natchez, MS. He was reportedly hanging boom gates to a Cell South antenna when he fell.
- May 16: Guilford was rappelling down a load line attached to a 200 foot monopole when he stopped abruptly 140 feet up and bounced as if on a bungee cord, disengaging the carabiner that was secured to the tower. (link)
At least three of the six accidents, Lekutis says, citing industry documents, occurred on AT&T projects.
On May 21, AT&T (T) issued a press release describing its $20 billion roll-out of a nationwide 3G network. It promised to have 275 of the markets it serves in the U.S. 3G-ready by the end of June, and to finish the remaining 75 by the end of the year (see here). AT&T is the exclusive U.S. carrier for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone. A new, 3G version of that device is widely expected to be released in June.
A spokesman for AT&T Mobile confirms that Jonathan Guilford was working on a tower for an AT&T 3G network, but denies that his death or the others had anything to do with the June deadline. “That is a software upgrade,” says William Marks. “You go to each tower and use a laptop to perform the upgrade at the base station at the bottom of the tower. There is no need to climb towers.”
Marks acknowledges that AT&T is continuing to bring 3G networking to new markets in the U.S., work that involves building new towers and installing new antennas. But he says that this is part of the company’s broader 3G roll-out, and unrelated to any events in June.
On April 21, after the first two deaths on its projects, AT&T called for a construction stand down and issued an order to subcontractors that read, in part:
“AT&T … requires you to hold, at a minimum, a half-day safety refresher training course this week with all of your construction employees and subcontractors providing services for AT&T. Upon completion of the safety refresher training this week, AT&T expects that you will reinforce this training with additional random safety checks at the construction sites to ensure that appropriate safety measures are being used.”
AT&T’s Marks prefers to describe the order as a “refresher course,” rather than stand down. “We consider the safety of our contractors and our employees to be our first priority,” he says.
[Photo courtesy of Wireless Estimator.]
“We consider the safety of our contractors and our employees to be our first priority,”
Why do companies bother saying stuff like this? It isn’t their fault folks die when they fall off high things. Why lie so shamelessly? Do we have to be told they care? Are we that frightened and weak that we have to believe the corporation cares? Please.
And as a rigger, let me state that people die when they forget to tie themselves off. There really isn’t much more to learn, regarding safety at height. See, if you are not tied off, and you fall, you keep falling. Which is not so bad. But hitting the ground, that is usually pretty dangerous. So you tie off. Or you pay.
I worked part-time as an engineering intern for a Civil and Structural Engineering firm that also inspected towers and did tower mappings.
I can confirm that there are far too few well-trained professionals. The time between my first climb (250′ self-supporter) and my first solo climb (~15-20 climbs) was far too little.
Our “Friday morning safety meetings” were a little less than some people standing around staring at their shoes.
Not that we weren’t all competent or didn’t do our jobs correctly, but I can easily see someone in this field not get the proper training they deserve.
My training was basically “make sure you’re always tied off.”
C’mon, Apple — you gotta step up and train AT&T’s subcontractors to use safety harnesses.
This is an absurd way to use Apple in a headline to increase your readership.
ex ped: Was Apple in the headline?
I am in agreement that I do not believe it has anything to do with an IPHONE that is absurd.
AT&T can screw-up without the help of Apple.
PED had to squeeze out a story to meet his quota.
And he is still squeezing. ROTFLMAO
ex ped: You find this funny, Jim?
As a tower worker for 11 years I felt I had to weigh in on this. There is no way any company, short of having a full time inspector who climbs, can guarantee a contractor’s employees will be 100% tied off. And even then, mistakes in load capabilities, rigging, or design flaws can cause an accident. Iron workers face danger, as do electricians and many other trades. That is why we are paid and trained well, but even then you might lose your train of thought for one moment, and that is all it takes.
There has been an enormous boom in tower work in the past ten years, and not enough well trained workers. This trend will continue for awhile, I am afraid, until there is a larger number of professionals.
The country shouldn’t have to pay a price of lost lives for bringing any new products to market, whether or not the timeline is ambitious. If it’s the tower worker’s fault – and it may very well be in some instances - is not the point.
The cell phone carriers know that they or their project management companies don’t provide adequate supervision for safety on their cell sites. They insulate themselves through multiple tiers of contractors and indemnification clauses, and a public relations department that will try to mitigate the known number of high fatalities in the tower erection industry.
AT&T’s representative says, “We consider the safety of our contractors and our employees to be our first priority.”
Spare us the hackneyed safety slogan. Your first priority is profitability.
Apple says it is committed to ensuring the highest standards of social responsibility in everything they do and they want contractors to provide safe working conditions. AT&T probably has a similar pledge, but it doesn’t appear to be working – or perhaps it’s just not cost-effective when it comes to wireless construction.
Why would anyone release their carabiner on a tower? My husband wouldn’t think of going up his 60 ft tower without a serious safety harness, and would NEVER unhook his carabiner without having some sort of backup attachment to the tower.
The problem doesn’t seem like Apple’s, from a quick glance. It’s AT&T that promises the rapid roll-out (maybe without giving workers enough time to complete it??). Of course, it may be Apple’s timeline, not AT&T’s, that’s the problem. We don’t know that, either.
Either way, it sounds like workers rushing to make someone else’s deadline. “Deadline” has a special meaning, here.
I agree with Jason, these are safety issues that should be dealth with by the individual state OSHA departments. Sounds like these people are no tieing off or hooking up when working on these towers. Lousy way to go too.
What do you clowns not understand about “outside the reality distortion field?” The whole point of the column is to cast a skeptical eye at AAPL and its spin machine. The fact that you fanboys repeatedly cry about negative or slanted stories implies that none of you bother to read the whole column.
Slow news day? AT&T story yes, Apple story no. I understand you’re trying to imply they’re trying to rush to meet a June deadline that is only rumor at this point but it’s still wrong to make the implication. Why not link it to RIM or Nokia too–after all, they’re about to release new 3G hardware as well.
I’m not suggesting malice on your part PED but it’s subtle negativity like this that leads to all of the cries of an anti-Apple bias on your part.
There’s many missing pieces of historical data that could throw this article in one direction or another…but the bottom line here is are they adequately training their people to do this job? I do agree with the comment about safety harnesses … but that’s one of those pieces of missing data. Do we know if they WERE wearing them and were not properly secured in or if the harness failed?
Where is OSHA on this, If they fell that means that they are not waring a saftey harness
Change the design of the towers so the worker doesn’t have to hang off it like a circus performer.
Am I bad. Rappelling.
ex ped: Thanks. Not a word I get to use that often.
“May 16: Guilford was repelling down a load line..”
A major news source with sort of editing?
Should be “rapelling”.
Wow, that is horrifying. Even looking up at those towers from the ground gives me goosebumps.
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Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
i worked for a cell phone repair company for a total of 9 hours. I pretty much finished their training crash course before I walked off the site not to even come back to grab my pay check. They literally rushed the 4 of us in training and taught us more than a days worth of training in a days work. It was pretty ridiculous. I respect these guys who do this job but have been there first hand and I dont think the training is nearly thorough enough. Something has to be done or the deaths will continue to happen.