Almost cooked my crew on a job in Houston last July

We were doing a boiler retube at a chemical plant in Houston last July, temps hit 105 outside and inside that boiler was like an oven. I had the guys working through lunch trying to get it done faster, being the hard charger I usually am. One of my welders started getting disoriented after about 45 minutes, looked like he was gonna pass out right there. Called the safety guy and found out his cooling vest wasnt even working right, the gel packs were all shot. Now I check everyones cooling gear before we start and I make sure we take a 10 min break every hour when its over 90. Anyone else had close calls with heat stress on outage jobs?

2 comments

2 Comments

grant.luna9d ago

That thing you said about checking gear before rolling in is really the key. Those cooling vests and gel packs seem like they should work forever but they wear out faster than people realize, especially in southern heat. I've started keeping a log now of when each guy got his last fresh set of packs, and I swap them out more often than the manufacturer says. The 10 minute breaks are good but I also learned to watch for the quieter signs like someone slowing down or not talking as much, not just the obvious wobbling. One thing that helped me was having a cooler with ice towels ready to go, just plain wet towels on ice so if someone starts overheating you can slap one on their neck fast. It's those little things you don't think about until you've had a close call, then you get real particular real quick.

jason7529d ago

Man, that's rough. I had a similar scare a few years back where a guy went down from heat exhaustion and it scared the hell out of me, now I'm the same way about mandatory breaks and checking gear before we even roll in.