Several factors led me into the world of safety; my Dad working for the Nova Scotia Power Corporation for 46 years, and him taking time to teach grade 5’s about electrical safety, knowing when there was a bad storm, and when the phone rang late at night, it was a call for my Dad to go to work. I remember Mom staying up until he returned home safe, learning about my Great-Grandfather and Grandfather both killed at the same workplace 15 years apart. But the main event was about 17 years ago I was working for a small construction group who was contracted to a very large & great organization. The main goal was to re-brand the large organization, kind of a facelift. I was a painter for the small construction group and I loved it 🙂 This particular day I was painting a vertical propane storage tank (this was in the 1990s) I cannot remember the last one I would have seen, but if you remember these tanks, they had “PROPANE” painted vertically in big letters descending the tank. During the re-brand on this job, I was tasked to paint over the big white letters, so the word propane was no longer visible.
I will paint you a picture of this day; it was a beautiful hot summer day. I was so excited to see the sun. I was wearing a tank top, shorts and flip flops, and I had full intentions of getting a great tan that day. Another employee helped me set up the extension ladder; we extended the ladder to the top of the tank; I grabbed the paint bucket and brush and proceeded to ascend the ladder; the paint was a thick oil-based paint, with such a harsh scent, I swear that is all I could smell that summer. Just after the first break, I was working on painting over the “O” when a man approached the bottom of the ladder and started yelling, “get down from there now, right now” I looked at him as if he had four heads; however, he was not letting up, so I descend the ladder. This man proceeded to tell me the risks of being on the ladder, which by the way, the only risk I thought of that day was possibly getting sunburned shoulders. We were not allowed to continue work that day (unless we could implement procedures and produce equipment to utilize other than me, extension ladder and my amazing flip flops, which we could not), so I took all of the information that I learned that day back to my boss, oh and “that man,” by the way, was an Occupational Health and Safety Officer for the Department of labour. After speaking with the Safety Officer, it piqued my curiosity about the world of safety, and that is where my journey into safety started.
