A few weeks ago, I fell off a ladder…or, more accurately, the ladder slid out from underneath me as I was climbing up during a light rain to get some measurements for a second-story window replacement. I probably would have been fine if I hadn’t managed to land on my back on top of … yeah, you guessed it … the ladder. X-rays confirmed that I probably didn’t break anything, though the ER doc couldn’t say with certainty that I hadn’t cracked a couple of ribs. So, despite a sore rib cage that’s slowed me down for the last month, I was lucky in a sense. The lesson I learned? A light rain can make a bluestone paver as slippery as ice.

That’s NOT a picture of my arm; instead, it’s a picture of Forrest McCanless’s forearm after surgery to repair the damage from a much lower (4 feet!) fall from a stepladder. You can read his story and others in a series of safety articles in PDB‘s sister publication JLC, including Safety Lessons Learned and Job-Site Safety Lessons; there are dozens of ways to get hurt on the job. Most of the time, though, following a few basic safe work practices as you gain experience on the job site will allow you to go home to your family at the end of the day, instead of to the emergency room. To help others learn from your own brushes with disaster, I’m hoping you’ll send your own safety story (along with photos, if you have them) to prodeck@hanleywood.com. Our plan is to compile the best ones and publish them both online in PDB and in JLC, in a continuation of the Safety Lessons Learned series.