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Switched my pre-lift inspection routine after a job in Tulsa
I used to just do a quick visual check before every lift. Then last month on a site in Tulsa, I skipped looking at the weather report before we started. A gust caught the load at 40 feet and I barely kept it steady. That made me add a full wind check and a load chart review to my morning routine. Now I take 15 minutes extra before any pick. Does anyone else have a close call that changed how they prep?
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olivia_webb2mo ago
Roll your eyes at me all you want but one gust doesn't mean you need a whole new religion around prepping. I've been lifting for 12 years and half the time a "close call" is just normal wobble that looks worse from the ground than it actually is. Weather forecasts lie all the time too, I've had clear skies turn into a mess 20 minutes later. Sounds like you got spooked by something that probably happens more often than you think and now you're overcorrecting. Save the 15 minutes and use it to actually check your hardware instead.
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haydenp951mo ago
I read a study a while back that said something like 70% of rigging incidents happen in winds under 20 mph, so it's not always the big gusts that get you. @king.lisa that Odessa story is exactly what I mean, it doesn't take a storm to mess with a load.
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wren6521mo ago
Nah, olivia_webb has a point honestly. The guy in Tulsa probably just got rattled by a normal wobble that happens all the time. Weather forecasts are wrong as often as they're right, so adding a whole 15 minute wind check routine is just a way to make yourself feel better, not actually safer. All that extra time could be spent double-checking your slings or shackles, which is way more likely to cause a real problem than a gust at 40 feet. A close call doesn't mean you need to rebuild your whole approach, sometimes you just need to brush it off and keep moving.
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