The title makes you think that the man was up on a roof and fell off.
This was not just any man.
This was Ken Hendricks.
Ken was the 91st richest man in the United States. His net worth is $3.5 billion.
How did he get so rich, you ask? He started his own roofing company at age 21, and then started a national roofing supply distribution chain (ABC Supply Company).
From everything I have read he was a well liked man. A couple of years ago he was quoted as saying “I’ll sell the company over my dead body”. ABC Supply Company has 6,000 employees in 390 locations doing $3 billion in sales a year.
So how does a man who has been in the roofing business since working with his father as a youngster (his dad was a roofer) die of massive head injuries when roofing has been his life? He fell through his own garage roof.
Ken was checking on construction work being performed on his garage roof when he fell through. Ken was not wearing fall protection. Anytime roofing work is in progress, no unauthorized individuals should be up on the roof.
I even recommend to roofing inspectors and estimators that they wear fall protection during their inspections.
Another True Story:
On a Friday in June, an estimator arrived at a remodel job to look at a cedar-shake roof and estimate the cost to roof the addition that the construction crew was building.
He spoke to the foreman at the site, and was directed to the roof through an open skylight by means of a metal extension ladder.
The estimator went onto the roof with his tape measure.
He was not accompanied by construction-crew members.
The estimator was unaware that the contractor had used a sheet of thin insulating material to cover “three” two-feet-by-six-feet skylight openings in the roof of the new addition because it had rained the day before.
The estimator stepped onto the thin insulating material and fell through one of the skylights.
He landed on his back inside the structure, about 15 feet below where he’d been standing on the roof.
The foreman and two subcontractors heard the estimator fall and rushed to the site of the accident.
One of the subcontractors used his cell phone to call emergency medical services.
When EMTs arrived about five minutes later, they stabilized the victim and took him to a hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery for spinal injuries. The estimator was not wearing fall protection.
OSHA says “Whenever any work is performed from an elevation where the potential for a serious or fatal fall exists, employers should ensure that fall-protection equipment is provided and utilized by their employees”.
All employees of construction companies delivering equipment or materials on unguarded roofs, or to anyplace where fall hazards exist, must also be protected by use of adequate fall-protection or fall-restraint systems. Deliveries to commercial sites require fall protection when fall distances are six feet or greater (1926.501(b)(10), and (11)). Deliveries to residential sites require fall protection when fall distances are 10 feet or greater.
I always recommend some form of fall protection for any work over 6 feet.
