Recently we had an outside contractor in to inspect our cooling towers. Apparently quite recently this company lost an employee when a cooling tower fan that he was tied off to was started. I do not know the particulars of the LOTO used in that case, but this guy was sure careful when I was clearing a fan for his inspection. We showed him the controls for the fan, which we taped over with a note, and we locked out the breaker with our lock and tag, and he placed his own lock and tag in a separate hole on the breaker and tagged it. The thing that was pretty cool was his do not operate tag actually had a picture of him on it, with a warning that his life was in your hands!
It's a shame that accidents like that happen, but hopefully their employees and management learned how very important safety is, and will continue to thoroughly enforce safety rules.
