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Watch out for bad rigging on those old water towers
I was on a job in Gary, Indiana last month, taking down a 50 year old water tower. The rigging points looked solid from the ground but two of them were corroded clean through near the top of the ladder. I almost hooked my safety line to one before a younger guy on the crew spotted the rust flaking off. Since then I always check every anchor point myself with a hammer test before I trust any of them. Has anyone else run into hidden corrosion problems like this on older jobs?
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piper_reed16d ago
My buddy Carl found this on a job in Ohio about five years back... he was working on an old grain elevator and one of the main suspension cables looked fine from the ground. He climbed up and tapped it with his hammer and a whole chunk of rusted metal just fell off, leaving about three strands of wire holding. The inspector had signed off on it the week before too. Carl said if he'd put his full weight on that cable he'd have dropped forty feet onto concrete. He always shows new guys the hammer test trick now, says it saved his life twice since then.
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