Safety harness tangle at the refinery taught me a lesson

Last Friday at the Marathon refinery in Gary, I was climbing down a scaffold and my harness line wrapped around a pipe hanger so bad I was stuck dangling about 15 feet up. Took me a solid ten minutes to untwist it with one hand while my buddy below kept yelling 'just cut it, we'll patch you up!' Now I always clip in with the latch facing out and do a spin check before moving... anyone else have a close call like that or just me?

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jordancoleman29d ago

...and honestly the spin check is the part that sticks with me most... I've been doing this twelve years and I still catch myself skipping it when I'm in a hurry to get down before shift change. That's usually when stuff goes sideways, right? Like the one time my glove got snagged on a valve wheel and I had to reverse my whole climb just to get loose. Your latch trick is solid though, I started doing that after a buddy of mine got hung up for almost twenty minutes on a cable tray... his line twisted so bad he had to unclip and reclip just to get free.