A Florida man died in November when he was electrocuted while working on a power line. Co-workers attempted to perform CPR on the man, and he was transported to a hospital after rescue workers arrived at the accident scene. The man died at the hospital as a result of his injuries.
Line work is one of the ten most dangerous professions. This is not surprising, because line workers work with or near electrical wires, and they often work in rain, snow, and other severe weather to restore service to homes and businesses that have lost power. Even when there are no power outages, line workers are busy installing, repairing, and maintaining the electric and utility lines that bring power, telephone, television, and internet to businesses and homes. Line workers do a diverse assortment of tasks in their work, from trimming trees and setting poles to stringing wires, splicing and soldering cables, replacing worn or damaged components of the electrical and utility distribution systems, and inspecting and testing lines.
For every one hundred thousand people who work on utility lines each year, there are between thirty and fifty fatalities. In addition to workplace fatalities, line workers experience a high risk of on-the-job injuries. Electrocution is an obvious risk of line work. The risk of falls, fires and explosions, musculoskeletal trauma, confined space injuries, and stress-related injuries are also present on line work job sites. Electrical burns and mechanical injuries lead the list of the types of injuries suffered by line workers on the job. Some injured utility workers even lose limbs because of workplace accidents.
Many utility companies acknowledge the high level of risk associated with line work. Still, the injury and fatality rate for the profession is slow to drop despite their increased efforts to improve employee safety. While some companies have improved their employee training programs, others have not, and employees who are not adequately trained to perform this dangerous work pose a danger to others as well as to themselves because line workers work in groups. Sometimes, safety equipment is not maintained in good repair, or line work vehicles are not in good working condition. These issues increase the risk of a line work accident, as does the cumulative stress of working long hours, which often happens for line workers, especially during storms and widespread power outages.
A line work injury can keep you out of work for quite some time. Medical bills can pile up if you have to miss work while you heal, and you may face uncertainty about whether you will recover enough to be able to return to doing line work. If you were injured in a line work accident or if you lost a family member in a line work accident, know that you do not have to navigate the daunting process of filing a workplace injury or death claim alone. Call the Mississippi Workplace Accident Attorneys at Barrett Law PLLC at 1 (601) 790-1505 to learn more.
