Safety Concern at Waterloo Regional

[cpeister]

I was fairly certain the ladder said FIRST on it. Can someone confirm this either way?

[EricH]

Kara, the FIRST-built fields come with at least one ladder and a wheelchair ramp. I don't know if the FiM-built fields do; if not, it wouldn't hurt to build the ramp just in case. (I only know of a couple of cases where it's actually been used. Shouldn't be too hard to build just one and have the teams say "We would like to use it" a week or two before to make sure it gets into the trailer going to that event.) I've been up those ladders a time or two.

I wonder if FIRST was expecting people to do tower maintenance at a time when they'd have time to pull the tower down...

[alectronic]

The way it was explained in the field manual was that you were supposed to unscrew the tower and bend it over to "normal" height to switch the lights on and off. There should have been enough slack in the signal cord to allow this. But if I had been faced with the same problem, I probably would have reached for the ladder too, messing with taking the pole down just takes too long.
FIRST does supply a ladder on the trucks, but it is not a very big one.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by techalex

The way it was explained in the field manual was that you were supposed to unscrew the tower and bend it over to "normal" height to switch the lights on and off. There should have been enough slack in the signal cord to allow this. But if I had been faced with the same problem, I probably would have reached for the ladder too, messing with taking the pole down just takes too long.
FIRST does supply a ladder on the trucks, but it is not a very big one.

Unscrewing the pole takes a significant amount of time. I too can understand why someone went straight for the ladder.

-Brando

[Racer26]

Later on, dealing with the same problem (I believe 1 match later, IIRC), someone (I think this same volunteer) went up the ladder again, and the arm was not fully locked in position. THREE other volunteers came running and had him down and had the safety risk fixed in seconds before sending him up again.

FIRSTs focus on safety IS getting through to people. Sometimes circumstances still cause us to forget details. My guess is that in the heat of the moment, this volunteer simply hadnt noticed that the arm had failed to lock in. Luckily, others noticed, and did their part to remove the risks.

[Btower]

Pull the Tower down, takes about 5 minutes to undo the base cover, detach the wires, lower the tower, remove and replace the top and put it all back together. Barely enough time for a chicken dance and much safer than a ladder.

Minbot retrival is a concern, a student using the practice filed tower at Niles got cut up catching the bot, please use gloves. There are lots of sharp edges on many of them and blodsatins are hard to remove from the carpet.

[seannoseworthy]

Originally Posted by cpeister

I was fairly certain the ladder said FIRST on it. Can someone confirm this either way?

This ladder was definitely supplied by FIRST. As seen here

[c-parent]

Originally Posted by seannoseworthy

This ladder was definitely supplied by FIRST. As seen here

And the liability and workers comp rates just went up based on the proof provided!

[Lil' Lavery]

Why was a referee doing field repairs?

[Pat Fairbank]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Why was a referee doing field repairs?

He volunteered to have a look at the light since he's familiar with that particular kind from his work.