Reasons to Include Confined Space Rescue Services in Your Safety Plans
As the owner of a grain elevator, you bear an important obligation of keeping your workers as safe as possible. You must ensure that they work in the safest conditions possible. You must also ensure that you can respond to any emergency immediately to avoid the loss of life. To ensure that you can act in any emergency quickly, you must prepare for any circumstance, including a confined space rescue. You can minimize the chances of workers losing their lives by including Confined Space Rescue Services in your elevator's safety plans.
Avoid Reliance on 911
When you implement confined space rescue services in your OSHA-approved safety plans, you avoid having to rely solely on local 911 services to rescue trapped workers. Chances are that the 911 operator that you talk to during the crisis is not going to know any better than you what to do to rescue people who are trapped in silos. They may or may not only be able to tell you to wait until first responder services arrive on the scene. During the minutes that you wait for them, however, you could cause the trapped worker to lose his or her life. When you train for and are ready to use confined space rescue services, you can act quickly to reach the worker, if possible, on your own. You can have equipment, such as ropes, cables, and harnesses, ready to try to rescue this person on your own.
Furthermore, you will know how to implement first-stage rescue efforts without compromising the safety or lives of workers assisting in the efforts. You can keep them out of the silos and connected to safety equipment like a harness or cable. You avoid causing more people to be rescued once first responders arrive. The confined space rescue services that you invest in for your elevator will also prompt you to map out the layout of the silos in which your staff works. You can have this layout on hand to refer to during rescue efforts. The layout can be vital for helping first responders find where the trapped worker is and getting him or her out before he or she dies.
Confined space rescue services can mean the difference between life and death. You avoid relying solely on the instructions of a 911 operator to help trapped workers. You also keep other workers safe and can begin first-stage rescue efforts.