Safety Meeting: Loose Battery Cables and the Guy who almost Fried

This talking point involves electric lifts with loose battery cables. The specific loose cable I refer to is the one that hangs out of the side of the lift body. The lift drivers in the facility had a habit of performing a token pre-shift inspection. When they did the inspection the casually looked over the lift and said “it is good” and checked the little boxes on the operator checklist and begin working… This attitude led to a very serious incident.

            The issue begins with the attitude, followed by poor practices by the battery technician. The battery technicians would change the batteries, but were not in the habit of making sure the battery cables were pushed fully within the body of the lift. When operators would notice the loose cables, they would just ignore the danger. The prevailing attitude was “so what, it isn’t my problem”.

            One evening, an operator was loading a trailer. As he got near the end of the trailer he got to close to the wall. When he scrapped the wall with his lift, the loose cable got damaged. The scraping action sheared the skin off of the cables. The wires became exposed and started arcing. The resulting electrical arcing caused a wire to weld itself to the body of the lift and created a small fire. The fire was put out and the lift had to be moved off of the wall to break the electric circuit.

            The incident had several results. The battery itself was a total loss.  The lift had smoke damage. A thumb thick wire was welded to the body of the lift and had to be cut. Through extreme luck the operator was not injured. A review of the equipment indicates the operator could have easily received an electrical burn or shock had he touched the body of the lift before the circuit was broken.

            The accident investigation found that both operator and battery technicians carelessness contributed to the incident. Ultimately, the operator was found negligent and received counseling. The operator was sent for the mandatory drug and alcohol screening. The operator was not allowed to operate equipment until he had been sent for recertification. The entire staff of the facility received refresher training on loose wires. The management raised the level of accountability for pre-shift inspection.

            As a talking point, you should insure your staff understands the risk to operator and equipment from loose wires and to less than serious attitudes towards pre-shift inspections