Industrial Stories

I previously worked at a refrigerated warehouse facility that had a Safety Director that was a bit of a moron. One day we had an ammonia leak on the hot gas line of an evaporator coilbox unit.

The Safety Director was in a state of panic as he was under the impression that ammonia was like cyanide: "Don't let any of that
ammonia get on your skin, one drop will kill you!" He never bothered to think that there are ammonia household cleaners
and that they never would allow a cyanide-type substance for home use.

After validating the NH3 and O2 levels and determining that they were within safe limits for entry, another technician and myself prepared to enter and repair the leak. We each had a cannister
style air-purifying respirator and our tools. We were barred from entry by our safety director who insisted that we don our HAZMAT
fully-encapsulated suits with SCBA's. After much argument, he
refused to allow us to enter even though the ammonia level was
well below the 300 ppm threshold specified by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration here in the United States for
mandatory SCBA use and way below the 5000 ppm threshold
for the use of Level-A HAZMAT suits.

Realizing that we were wasting time, we complied with the Safety Director's commands and entered the space fully equipped with
our HAZMAT gear.

Looking back at the Safety Director who was watching from an open doorway, we witnessed one of the most stupid and humorous sights. There in the door the Safety Director had lit a cigarette. It reacted with the ammonia in the air and in his lungs and he was now hacking, coughing, and gasping for air. How stupid! Here he was so paranoid about the ammonia and our gear, never realizing the effects of inhaling ammonia-laden air with cigarette smoke. Then, the moron never realized that under the right conditions, lighting his cigarette could have set off an explosion. It was a delight to watch him hack!

Surely you had back-up team suited up in level A and de-con team set-up.

The paranoia around ammonia is amazing.

I feel good that we convinced local team to go from level A to level B. They do too. Level B is only mildly inhibiting.


Jim Heffernan
Tillamook, Oregon, USA

No Jim, there was no back-up team, de-con, or any of the
procedures consistent with OSHA regs. Remember, the Safety
Director, who should have been the Incident Commander was a bit of a moron.

In reality, he over-reacted to the max. The leak was so small,
you may not even have had to use an air-purifying respirator.

I really don't know how the Safety Director got or retained his job.
He was supposed to go for training as an Incident Commander,
but everytime the class was scheduled, he would make some excuse not to attend. Maybe he was afraid of the SCBAS?

It's the Peter Principle at work:

He was promoted until placed in a job that he couldn't handle, then not demoted nor promoted. It's known as reaching one's highest level of incompetence.

Just like the folks at OSHA.

Incompetant ? (heheheheh)