I Saw the Hazard

It was probably around 2010 or 2011, and we were doing some night work on an AT&T cell site during a bandwidth expansion project. We had an RF jumper we were working with, and I remember noticing that one end of it was getting awfully close to the -48-volt battery area.

I told the guys, "Hey, watch that other end. Make sure it doesn't short out on those batteries."

Well, that's exactly what happened.

I'll never forget the noise it made. I don't even know how to describe it. The whole thing probably lasted one or two seconds, but that was enough. The plastic insulation on the outside of that jumper was melting and dripping onto the floor almost instantly. There was smoke, alarms going off, and the entire site went down. One of the guys even ended up burning his hand.

It happened so fast you didn't have time to think. One second, we're working, and the next we're dealing with a pretty serious situation. And I'll tell you, it was scary.

We got things under control, dealt with the alarms, and watched the site come back online. We kept an eye on everything, and the testing afterward didn't show any continuing problems. Before we left, we talked about what happened and changed the way we were handling that jumper. From that point on, we made sure two people were controlling it so neither end could get away from us.

But that incident stuck with me, and not just because of the noise or watching that insulation melt.

What bothered me was that I'd seen it coming.

I'd recognized the hazard. I'd even told the guys to watch out for it. But looking back, telling somebody to watch something isn't necessarily doing enough to prevent it from happening.

At the time, I probably felt like I'd done my part by pointing it out. Today, I look at it differently. I should have stopped long enough to make sure we had control of both ends before anybody moved that jumper. We could have done more to protect the battery area, too.

And there's the other side of it. I don't remember every conversation that took place that night, including exactly what was communicated to the customer. But I know today that an incident like that needs to be reported and documented, whether the site comes back online or not. Just because everything appears to be working doesn't mean nothing happened.

You know, it's funny how something from that long ago can come right back to you.

Just the other night, we were doing another power plant replacement, and one of the guys was working on the batteries. He had a piece he needed to pass through to the other side to make a connection, but he couldn't see what was going on over there.

I watched him for a moment, and I could tell he was trying to get his part of the job done. He wanted to contribute. He wasn't trying to do anything wrong. He was just focused on finishing what he'd been assigned.

But I didn't like what I was seeing.

I told him, "Hey, wait until you've got somebody to help you, or wait till I'm done with what I'm working on."

I could see he was disappointed. He wanted to keep going, and I understood that. I've been there myself. When you've got a job to do, you want to get it done, especially when everybody else is working.

But sometimes you've got to stop somebody, even when they're doing their best to help.

And that reminded me of the jumper incident all those years ago. Back then, I'd seen something that concerned me, said something about it, and kept working. This time, I wasn't going to rely on somebody just being careful. I wanted another set of eyes on the other side before he continued.

That's something experience has taught me. You can have good people, capable people, people who genuinely want to do the right thing, and things can still go wrong in a split second.

I don't look back on that AT&T job and think somebody was careless or that we had a bad crew. I look back and think about what I could have done differently. Because I was the one who saw the hazard, and I had an opportunity to do more about it.

The equipment from that night is probably long gone. That whole generation of technology has likely been replaced by now. But I can still remember that sound and how fast everything happened.

And here I am, all these years later, still using something I learned that night.

I guess that's one of the things about experience. Sometimes the lessons that stay with you the longest are the ones you wish you'd learned a different way.