Article copied from Wireless Estimator:

August 22, 2008 - Continuing education about the dangers and the resulting deaths caused by free climbing is believed to have reduced the high fatality rate of workers falling from an elevated structure, but there are many climbers nationwide that continue to recklessly ignore adhering to 100% fall protection requirements.

In an effort to reduce free climbing, stem fatalities and ensure that tower workers maintain 100% tie off, field personnel of some of the major tower owners are taking a proactive role in ensuring that violators are identified.

A number of them have photographed or videoed free climbing activities on their competitors’ structures and have contacted the owner of the tower to alert them to the crew members’ careless disregard for safety, requesting that they too be accorded the same courtesy if free climbing is observed on any of their structures.

One tower owner company is taking their employees’ documentation of a violation on another company’s site to decide whether they will allow continuance of the  contractor’s work on their towers.

Individual tower workers and employees of management companies are also becoming vigilant in letting companies know of violations on their sites.

“Ideally, the thing to do is to contact OSHA, but the chances of them showing up on time are slim,” said one Milwaukee project manager. “But the alternative is to get those companies kicked off approved vendors’ lists and put the word out about the company or at least the individuals,” he said.

An OSHA official informed WirelessEstimator.com last month that inspections on wireless construction job sites are not at the level that they would like to see and “it is unlikely that you will ever see a crackdown targeting the tower construction industry. We just don’t have the resources,” he said.

Tower Climbers Hall of Shame candidates were captured last week on a video taken in South Carolina . A site supervisor noticed the free climbing and filmed it a thousand feet away through his rear view mirror. The owner of the tower, one of the two largest companies in the industry, has been notified of the incident.

A photograph was taken  in upstate New York earlier this month by a retired tower technician who said that he is still concerned about the number of people that do not tie off. He said that the two men on the tower noticed that he was photographing them, but they continued to free climb on the carrier-owned site.

A safety director for one of the nation’s largest tower consolidators said that he believes that it might be advantageous to the industry if the major tower owners would get together to specifically identify companies that have had numerous violations. However, he said that he wasn’t aware of what the legal considerations might be and preferred not to comment.

If you have any Tower Climbers Hall of Shame candidates, send them to info@wirelessestimator.com , but more importantly, let the tower owner know about the serious safety infractions that you observed