any of you guys ever been stuck under a house, or and a bucket truck, while in the air, and had to call for help ?

MJ:
Not happy to 'fess up....but...
One of my 'lectricians was taking down holiday decorations last January...
55' TECO, two man, end hung..full out lower & upper booms.
Damn if he didn't loose the joystick control at the bucket.. lower controls were locked out..there was a pinched hyd hose at the lower/upper knuckle..
Called the Fire Dept... they said.."we don't have a ladder big enough to reach him", they called mutual aid town, who arrived with a 110' ladder.
While attracting quite an audience at the shopping center, the captive 'lectrician climed out of the bucket & down the ladder.

BTW, he's a "big boy", I will not elaborate on that.

To make matters worse, it was about 15 degrees, with a 15 MPH wind.

John

[This message has been edited by HotLine1 (edited 11-21-2002).]

Well...

I once forgot to unhook my lanyard from the beam when working 50' up in the rafters at a factory. Dropped the bucket and felt a sharp tug... Then the bucket stopped as my foot got pulled off the safety switch.

I could reach the joystick, but not the safety-switch, and boy was I in, not quite pain, but severe discomfort! Plus panicking, plus embarrassed...

Pondering for a moment or two, I got the idea to drop tools out of my pouch in an effort to build a big enough pile to kick around and get the switch going again. The switch had a hood, and I was hanging head forward and had to get my self swinging pretty good to get it, but I eventually did.

I probably looked like Peter Pan in some low budjet elementary school play gone horribly wrong...

Time elasped, probably a good ten minutes, but it felt like hours!

As far as I know, no one saw it happen!

Whew!

ahhhhhh . . . . thanks for that post Sparky66WV . . now I know who the guy is in those training videos they've been showing us at work

lol! i got stuck in a crawl space a while back.....

(nobody told me my a** was so fat....)

Years ago, we had a couple of guys up inside a sign, when the 90' boom on the boom truck retracted.
The FD arrived but the boom on their truck was about 6' short of the sign.
The fellas had to hang out of the sign and drop into the arms of the firefighters below.
When they got back to the shop, eyes as big as dinner plates, and bruised from the firefighters "death grip", the boss calmly asked them if they'd remembered to close the trap door on the sign.
They failed to see the humor.

Those are interesting situations. 66, as ususl, you win the prize in my book.
A six pack, (you like soda), a few burgers, or whatever.
John

Great stories everyone!

A situation came to mind regarding a co-worker doing side jobs.

This guy hired one of the company's new helpers to assist with a Residential side job.

Long story short - the helper got stuck in an attic, wedged between some kickers I think.
Co-worker kept hearing this faint voice calling out:
"Help Me, Mr. Home Owner!", "Mr. Home Owner!!!, Can You Hear Me???!!!", "Mr. Home Owner".

After finding out what's going on, tries to pull helper out of attic. Pulls helper's boot[s] off and plunges through the lid!

911 finally called out to save the day - end up thrashing the lid even more!

Although this situation really sucks and isn't a laughing matter, I fell to the floor and couldn't stop laughing for 15 Minutes!
It was the "Mr. Home Owner" thing that killed me!
To top that off, the Apprentice working with me had my stomach in knots every time he would go in attic spaces or on top of Safe Deposit Vaults.

Every few minutes "Help Me Mr. Home Owner" was heard either over the radio or across an open Plenum ceiling space!

All Ladders had the guy falling off the ladder saying "Help Me, Mr. Home Owner".

Man I am so glad that for once wasn't me!

Scott s.e.t.

This thread bring back an old memory. In 1970 I was working on a brand new very tall bucket truck while in the USAF. This truck was designed to reach above the T tail of the C-5A aircraft. (13+ stories) I had the bucket out at max extension and max height when one of my smart a** coworkers flipped the selector switch (located on the ground control panel) from areal to ground and flipped me off and walked away. There I was over 100' up ,no controls,stuck for three hours. My boss's manager saw me up there, got mad and ordered me to come down. He could not understand or hear me well enough to know why I could not do so. Finally he broughtr me down using the ground controls. 39 degrees and 25 mph winds. After explaining what happened he calmed down but had to stop me from going after said coworker.

I got stuck on a roof once, no twice. My boss sent me to replace a roof vent fan from the roof. When I got there nobody was home, but I could do the work from the outside. So I put the ladder against the gutter and climbed up, walked up the roof, did my work, then slowly went back to my ladder, but I couldn't make myself step back onto the ladder for fear it would slide down the gutter. After about 20 minutes, the lady came home and I had her hold the ladder.

Fast forward about 8 years. I had to check out something(don't remember what) on a roof on a very windy day. I set up my 32 foot ladder and went up to check it out. The 75 year old home owner who insisted on helping with the ladder decided to come up and check out what I was doing. After he came up, the wind blew the ladder off the roof. After about 30 minutes of yelling, the mans wife came out to see what was going on. Of course the ladder was too heavy for her to lift, but she did find a neighbor to help.

From this I've learned to ALWAYS tie off the ladder! Too bad it took 2 times to learn

How about falling through a ceiling. I've been doing electrical work for 31 years and never fell through a ceiling( came close before) but yesterday I was rewiring a old house, parts of it were gutted so that made it easier, but then as I was finishing up my day, I decided to go in the attic and pull my wires into the light boxes. It had lay in insulation, and at one of the seams of the insulation, where I thought there was a ceiling joist, that's where I put my hand. To my suprise there wasn't a ceiling joist there Well,before I knew it,my head was all that was holding me up from going completely through the ceiling.After I got strength enough to pull my self back up, I found out that the joist were at least 3 ft. apart, and one was 4ft. apart, believe it or not. Good thing this house was in the stages of remoldling anyway. Moral of story, don't take your ceiling joist for granted. Hope this helps you next time you're in an attic. Only came out with a few scraps and bruises. Could have been a whole lot worse. The Good Lord was watching after me By the way, I wasn't standing up, I was on my knees when I fell