$55M lawsuit says welder who fell to his death in Portland wore safety equipment that failed

www.oregonlive.com $55M lawsuit says welder who fell to his death in Portland wore safety equipment that failed

Calbert Dougi plunged 42 feet to the bottom of a Kinder Morgan storage tank in 2023.

tl;dr - Guy was wearing fall protection gear that was set to protect from a 55 foot fall.

He broke through the roof of a storage tank, fell 42 feet, and died.

Oregon law requires fall protection for more than 6 feet.

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Has a link for the lawsuit, actually just circles back to the article. My obvious question, why so much slack in a fall system? Was it supposed to engage upon rapid movement, or was it set up or labeled wrong? If there's a lawsuit that suggests there was something that was supposed to happen that didn't. Fall equipment should stop you immediately, as more time falling means more kinetic energy and injury.
- The system was designed to protect someone from falling 55 feet off the top of the tank, this poor guy broke through the roof where it was only 42 feet to the floor, 13 feet short of the fall protection kicking in. :(
- My fall arrester back in the day was called a "screamer" and it was kind of folded bungee/webbing. When you hit the end of the tether it unfolded and let you fall more slowly. So definitely did not stop immediately.
- There’s two different types of fall safety, fall prevention and fall arrest. Fall prevention stops you before you fall; fall arrests stop your fall after it happens. The reason why you have a certain amount of slack is because the slack helps absorb the energy; a solid lanyard that doesn’t deploy would distribute the energy throughout your body instead of through the lanyard, which is more damaging.
  The type of damage you’re thinking of would be for a fall against a flat surface, you’d want to hit the ground sooner rather than later. But energy transfer through a lanyard benefits more from having room to deploy, and can help prevent your body from going into shock.
  Edit: whoops, said fall arrest twice