OT - Tower/Lightning Safety Personnel Policies

[N4DES]

I'm looking for agency/company written policies on employee's working inside tower sites during a lightning storm. Specifically I need what protocols the company/agency and supervisor have to ensure their employee's safety while working at a tower site that are prone to direct lightning strikes.


We had a close call today with one of my facility mechanics working on the HVAC at a tower with a 410' lightning rod overhead and I think he had to take the day off early to go home to change his briefs because it was quite an event.

If you have an official policy that you can send, please email it direct to [email protected].

Thanks
Mark

[Jim202]

I'm looking for agency/company written policies on employee's working inside tower sites during a lightning storm. Specifically I need what protocols the company/agency and supervisor have to ensure their employee's safety while working at a tower site that are prone to direct lightning strikes.


We had a close call today with one of my facility mechanics working on the HVAC at a tower with a 410' lightning rod overhead and I think he had to take the day off early to go home to change his briefs because it was quite an event.

If you have an official policy that you can send, please email it direct to [email protected].

Thanks
Mark

Some common sense comes into play here. Having spent about 18 years or so constructing cellular sites over the years, most people will get away from the towers when there is a thunderstorm in the area.

I have been at the base of a real tall TV tower that also had an AM station on the tower. As a result they had insulators on the guy wires. Even though the storm was some 10 to 15 miles away, the guy wires would build up a charge and the charge would jump the insulators. This would build up and get more of a static jump across the insulators until you would see a bolt of lightning flash way off in the distance. The insulators would be calm for a short time and start the process all over again.

If your working at the base of a tower and there is a storm off in the distance, it is best to curtail any work until the storm passes. The atmosphere has the ability to build up a charge that most of us have never seen in real life. You will be amazed at just how much of a charge builds up from a storm off in the distance.

It doesn't take much to write up an SOP to stay away from the tower or anything metal in the area during a storm in the region. I wouldn't even stay inside the shelter unless I was forced to. Sparks tend to fly around inside the shelter if the entire shelter was not built to a good grounding spec. The Motorola R56 grounding didn't just come out of thin air. It was developed over the course of time. Many sources of input were used to create that document on grounding. A good portion originated from the work that the Bell Labs has done over the course of time. If you don't have EVERYTHING BONDED together inside the shelter, it is only a matter of time before your going to have to repair something there.

Now to put to bed the old saying that "You can't survive a direct hit" is bunk. When I was building cell sites along the gulf coast, those towers took direct hits all the time. I would say that 99.99 percent of the time, we never had any damage to the equipment in the shelter. Can't say that for the antennas. They often had to be replaced as not much was left of them if they were at the top of the tower. We tried to place a high ground rod above the antennas, but you couldn't always manage that. The fiberglass sticks are the ones that took the beating. Panel antennas managed to fair much better.

I kind of got off the real track of your question, but wanted to provide some background on why things happened to allow you to make your own policy, based on your location.

Jim

[Bill_G]

I'll ask our safety guy if we have a written policy, and forward it to you if we do.

Like Jim said, common sense is the rule. You don't stand in traffic. You don't put your hand in the alligator tank. You don't light matches around gasoline. You don't work on equipment in a shelter during a lightning storm.

I have seen lightning weld telephones to a filing cabinet (the old style Western Electric POTS set with the metal bottom). I have seen lightning blow electrical panels off the wall. It is amazing what it can do.

[N4DES]

Oh yeah I agree on the common sense but I am dealing with facility maintenace folks (HVAC techs, basic electricians that change light bulbs, etc.) and being govt it has to be in writing. Have to protect management and the County from liability as best I can.

Thanks guys.
Mark