Aerial Work Platform Safety - The Dangers of Being Trapped at Height

Jan 21
06:05

2020

Nancy Whitman

Nancy Whitman

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Working at heights. You or your workers. One of the risks is that you might be trapped at height. What is the correct thing to do when this does happen?

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There are so many safety features for working on high platforms. To ensure that you or your workers won’t fall from high heights and getting injured. But,Aerial Work Platform Safety - The Dangers of Being Trapped at Height Articles what will happen when these safety features trap you at height? That these features that are keeping you safe, is preventing you from getting down? Here are a couple of things that you should remember about the dangers of being trapped at height.

The dangers of being trapped at work platform

The biggest danger of being trapped at work is if the person or one of the persons start to panic. This can cause a lot of problems for other people on the platform. With the person panicking, he can start to move around too much. This can break the platform, and everyone can fall down. Or, he might be bumping on other people and the other person might lose his footing and fall of the platform.

There are many dangers of being trapped at a work platform such as aircraft maintenance stands. It is important to make sure that workers know how to react when something like this is happening. This is the only way that a tragedy can be prevented. There are some safety features that should be taken when a person or persons are being trapped at height.

Why can these dangers happen

This type of danger can happen for many different reasons. But, the most common reason is that the platform is breaking down, and it isn’t able to go down again. The mechanicals of the structure are just like any other vehicle. It can break down at any given moment. And, when it does, it might mean that someone or workers are trapped at height on a platform.

The structure itself can break as well, preventing the platform to go down. When these happen, the dangers are immediately there. Especially if there is a worker that is inexperienced in getting trapped at height.

What to do when being trapped at a height

What should you do, when you are being trapped at height? The first thing that you should do is to stay calm. If you have a safety harness on, make sure that the harness is secure so that there isn’t any risk of you falling off the platform.

When you are with other workers, you need to make sure that they are all calm as well. Making sure that everyone has their safety harnesses on, and it is secure. Then, you should call for assistance. Normally, people working on a platform has a cellphone or radio with them. Use it and call for assistance.  And, until you know the reason for being trapped, stay as still as possible.

Preventing it from happening

Yes, in most cases being trapped at height on a platform could be prevented. In most cases, these dangers happen because a platform wasn't serviced and maintained very well. A well-maintained platform will not just break down while being in use.

The whole structure should also be inspected on a regular basis to make sure that there aren’t any structure faults that can cause complete breakage.

Working on platforms in high positions. The danger is that you can get stuck in the air. When this happens, it is important that you know how you should react and what you should do to stay safe, and to keep everyone else safe. Then, this isn’t much of a dangerous situation and everyone will get down safely.

Contact Alisafe for more info about all types of access platforms including industrial platforms.