Save your life by using your ladder safely

Roger talks about ladder safety after a recent tragedy on a site he was working at.

In this episode we see Roger using the Youngman Fibreglass Stepladder and the versatile Hunter Ladder from Ladder Safety Devices, we also see his neat ladder seat which sadly isn’t available anymore, so you’ll have to borrow Roger’s.

“A few weeks ago I was working on a site where somebody died by falling off a ladder. I had gone to collect some thermal boards and he told me he would give me a hand to unload. When I got back he was in intensive care and shortly after that he was dead, victim of a brain haemorrhage. The fall was from just over 2 metres. The ladder was set against a plastic gutter on a single story building.

“Nobody should ever put a ladder against a plastic gutter but on a low rise building many do it because the perceived risk is low. I could easily get side tracked here talking about the nature of risk but the bottom line is that we are often in the most danger when we think we are safe. If there is a risk of falling don’t just leave it to chance do something to mitigate the risk. It is a common misconception that you are not allowed to work from ladders. It is certainly true that you should only do limited short duration jobs from a ladder and you should have three points of contact with the ladder so that probably means one handed jobs. It follows that there is not much point hanging onto a ladder if it is able to move.

“Stopping a ladder moving can be done in many different ways. You can get a bloke on minimum wage to stand on the bottom rung. Personally, I have never had much faith in ladder footers, they tend to get bored and start texting or looking at passing members of the opposite sex or perhaps the same sex. I can well remember having a casual labourer who was given to smoking a joint while making phone calls when he should have been looking after the bottom of my ladder. If the choice is between him and a bag of sand, give me a bag of sand any day. Better still give me a ladder stabiliser.”

Avoid ladder accidents with our ladder safety video.