Six years ago today, on a drizzly afternoon, my friend David made a mistake. The mistake he made was doing something that he knew wasn't safe because it would only take a minute.
David and his crew were working on rolling out some geotextile fabric at the bottom of a trench when the roll needed to be cut and removed from the bottom of the trench.
It was 4:30, the crew was ready to go home, and it was going to take just a second, so David climbed down into the bottom of the ditch to make a three-foot cut on a piece of fabric. He turned to the side and tossed the roll upwards.
The wall of heavy clay soil collapsed burying David up to his neck instantly as his coworkers looked on in horror. In less than a minute, my friend David Williams was dead. His coworkers attempted rescue, but the clay soil was saturated, the amount of dirt to be moved was so great, that rescue was impossible.
Every year on this day I think of my friend David. And every time I think about taking a shortcut, or doing something unsafe because it will “just take a minute” I think of my friend.
Work safe today and every day. Do it for David. Do it for yourself. There is nothing on any job-site that is worth getting hurt on.