Episode 183: Summer Hits

In this episode of the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast, Dr. Mark French highlights the urgent need for proactive summer safety measures. As temperatures across the U.S. reach dangerous highs, several tragic workplace fatalities have occurred—many directly linked to extreme heat. Dr. French emphasizes that summer comes every year and should never catch companies unprepared. He cites multiple real-life cases, including the death of a postal worker in Texas, a softball umpire in South Carolina, and a 17-year-old tree trimmer in Michigan—each underscoring the devastating consequences of poor safety planning and lack of supervision.

Beyond heat, the episode reviews a slew of additional summer-related hazards: electrocutions, falls, overturned machinery, and road accidents. Dr. French expresses deep frustration with organizations that continue to neglect basic safety protocols such as lockout/tagout and fall protection. He reiterates that safety is not just about compliance—it’s a moral imperative tied to leadership.

To promote a safer work environment, Dr. French encourages leaders to engage their teams in conversations about seasonal risks. He suggests a simple but powerful safety activity: ask workers what new or increased hazards arise during summer—like roadwork, fatigue, distractions from children at home, or more farm equipment on the roads. By discussing these factors, organizations can raise awareness and take action.

Ultimately, the episode calls on leaders to do something—anything—because even a small effort can prevent harm. As Dr. French says, “One is greater than zero.” His message is clear: safety starts with awareness, leadership, and action

Transcript

Mark French: 0:00

The Summer safety season is in full swing, and that's not a good thing. We're going to talk about more summer safety this week on the podcast. You

Announcer: 0:20

mark, welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr Mark French. Mark's passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation and empowerment, together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode and now here is Dr Mark French. You mark,

Mark French: 1:27

hello and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. I am your host, Mark, and I am so glad, as always, that you've joined me. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your podcast rotation, and let's jump right in. It's been a busy past week in the world of safety, and not in a good way. That's never a good sign when safety is busy. Last week, we started talking again about summer safety. And I make the joke almost every year around this time of you know, summer happens every year, and it shouldn't surprise us when the weather turns warm and things begin to change and we need to take precautions. A lot of companies did not get the memo last week, and I want to talk about that. So last week, temperatures were wild. They were unbelievable. I The week before last. I was in San Antonio. Last week, I was in Boston this year, this week, back at home in Kentucky in last week, the temperatures were crazy. I flew up to Boston to actually get into higher temperatures and a higher heat index than what I had at home in Kentucky, and even higher than San Antonio, the most of the US, kind of the Southern and East area, and even even more parts were under some wild extreme temperatures for this time of year, heat advisories everywhere. It was kind of weird in the way that it wasn't a matter of being in danger from heat, it was just how degree of severity were you there with heat? And it it appears a lot of places were not ready for it. And that's unfortunate, because when when a company isn't ready to take care of the people, the people suffer, and that's unacceptable. Good leadership should number one be about preventing human harm. And I know that, unfortunately, does not appear to be true in all cases. And let's talk about some of that. So the news, and that's where I'm going to go through, is the news last week, a lot, a lot of very sad, very intense fatalities, disappointing. And as always, we talk about this, not to shame, not to blame, well, maybe a little bit there, but we want to learn. And I know if you're listening to this podcast, you're trying, you're not. I am preaching to the choir, proverbially, but I think we need to hear about these things. It reminds us of what we're doing and how maybe, maybe this is the wake up call for another company to get involved and start doing things and start changing the way they go about it. But the heat hit just like it does every summer, this time a little more extreme, maybe even a little early, breaking some records in some areas, but we still should have had a plan. And I say the royal we, as if, like, we could have been done something here. But I feel like there's a learning here about it. Let's start. Let's just, let's get started going through some of this that is out there. A lot of my own news searches and news pings, but also I always rely on a great blog. Blog called the confined space by Jordan barab, great, great blog, great supplement to the to some of the research I do independently, to kind of keep my eye out there of some of the most extremes of the world of safety and safety and leadership tie hand in hand, and I never really get past that. This is really a podcast about leadership, but it's most importantly, it's a podcast about people. And fundamentally, if we cannot protect our people from human harm, are we even getting close to the rest of leadership. Doesn't even matter what else we're doing if we cannot hit the moral imperative of protecting our people from danger and harm. Anyway, I keep promising them get started, and I got to get off the soap box and get going here the first one. Dallas, Texas, postal working. Postal worker, extreme heat. Heat stress died as on the work because of extreme heat, another one and Georgia said that there was a number an outdoor worker that came in, and they also, as they were doing the interview for the for the news story, the doctor that kind of treated the person said he he had seen pretty high, like a 20% increase in occupational heat exposure. An umpire doing a softball game in South Carolina fell ill and passed away from heat. Right off the bat, there's three just related to the heat, and these are the fatalities that were reported as work related fatalities. This doesn't even begin to encompass the ones that may not have been considered work related may have resulted in significant heat related stress, or those companies may not have even just tried or to report. And I think that's the saddest part, is that the data we get and the data we read is the ones that actually get reported, rather than the ones who are not doing what they should do in any case of the word. But let's keep going. One of the worst ones that I read about this past week is a 717 year old, 17 year old in Michigan, working as a tree trimmer. Was was tasked with the job of trimming up limbs, like fallen limbs, cutting them up using a chainsaw. The they were doing it in front of a homeowner's house. The homeowner came to the came home from wherever they were at found the 17 year old dead with a laceration to the neck. Yeah, I cannot imagine this in in so many ways. The worker was cutting up a fallen tree at a home. Details are limited. The home owner came outside to find the victim laying next to a chainsaw with a laceration to the neck. Lone Worker, super hazardous work, 17 years old, no supervision, working for a company and died in it. That's gruesome. That's gruesome in the homeowner. Can you imagine thinking that you're just getting someone to clean up your yard, and that's what you find unbelievable. That one this week really hit me, because it's summer, storms are coming through, limbs are falling. People want to clean up their yards. This is when that kind of work happens. And last week, we talked about the tree trimming and the the work and fall protection and just all the other types of work that happen in the summer specifically get really busy because of work like that, and they're looking for people, and they're looking to bring people into work, and they I don't know the full circumstances, but my guess is that being only 17 years old, they did not have a ton of experience with a chainsaw just because of age. I don't think they started operating a chainsaw at the tender age of 10 or something, and had seven years they were young, and that was that whatever happened was unbelievably exceptional. And. There is to me, there's so much negligence here that it makes me physically sick and physically angry to even think about that. And we're not done yet. There's more here. Last week was unbelievable from a safety news cycle. Let's keep talking about that on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast,

Stinger: 10:24

humanizing the workplace, it is the leading and learning through safety podcast,

Commercial: 10:32

dsda Consulting. Learn you lead others. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. Problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building, stress management, communication, conflict management, and so much more, individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web, AT T, S, D, A consulting.com

Mark French: 11:10

and welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast this week, disturbing podcast. My apologies for that and kind of negative, in a lot of ways, is we're looking at the news from just one week, seven days of safety news in the summertime has hit hard, and I think it's very timely, not that I predicted it, or I'm taking any credit, but last week, we did talk about the summer hazards that are going to be coming up and come up every year, and here we are. We're seeing it already in full swing, which is disappointing in a lot of ways, and it shows how far we as a nation have to come with safety, and how the need for good safety, professionals and good people leaders are necessary. Let's keep going. Michigan again. 24 year old electrocuted while working on a roof. He had been electrocuted and fell off the building. No fall protection, no lockout, tag out, nothing in Missouri, this is not a summertime one, but just one that rang true, because this is, this is too common in the food industry, and allegedly out of service oven, kind of a person got into a cereal baking oven and died before it could be turned off again and emergency responders could come now, this is still very fresh in my mind, because it was, it's been 10 years or more where a tuna fish factory killed someone in a pressure cooker, an industrial pressure cooker. This is too common, and it's just lock out, tag out. I say it's just lockout tagout. It's been around for a long time. It's been around even before OSHA came into an act companies understood they needed to notify people that things needed to be turned off. Don't go in. And here we still are. The year is 2025, and they found someone inside an oven, overturned piece of heavy machinery. So working outside, overturned piece of machinery, another electrocution, this time in Alabama, where someone was working on a piece of equipment for a pretty large organization, and had that happen, another tree trimming accident where the limb snapped fell to his death. A roofer and three injured were hurt while working on a roof and touched the power lines. A farm employee in Wisconsin was killed when the silo fell. A worker that was hauling gravel tipped over while dumping the load. The person was found unresponsive in the cab. I a truck driver killed on the side of the road, another worker on the side of the road killed in Kansas City, Missouri, semi truck driver killed construction workers injured in the crash in Michigan. Unbelievable. That just keeps going. And we look at these, and some of these are not abnormal for the summer, but there are things that we've seen the trends of but a lot. Yeah, a lot were related to additional summertime activities. If you were a leader in your organization, I ask, get with your team, get with your organization, get with your people, and bring up and just ask the question, what other hazards? What new hazards present themselves in the summer. It's not just heat, it's the fact that we may be busier. We may bringing be bringing in more people for seasonal work. It could be that there's a lot more growth and more store. There's so many other things that happen in the summer, other than heat, and Heat's big. I mean, that's a big deal, and maybe we'll see some legislation on it. Maybe we won't. Either way, it's the right thing to do, to ask your team if they're okay and need a break. Provide them with water, provide them with somewhere that has some shade, provide them a cool area of rest where possible, to do something rather than nothing in the other summertime activities. And here's a great exercise. It's one and it's it's not hard to do, and it doesn't require a ton of effort. And that's to pull the team together and go, Hey, we're entering summer. Things change in the summer. Maybe there's more traffic because everybody's on vacation. Maybe your kids are home and you're more distracted because you got to take care of them at night, or you're rushing to get home. What are the additional hazards and no bad ideas just, what are the additional hazards that we can share with each other that come up in our work during the summer, and sometimes the recognition of just, you know, I am hurried because there's more baseball games, or I get to be home with my kids, or they're not in school, so I need to be getting home, or there's more traffic on the road, and a lot of vacationers come to our town. There's a lot of really good ideas that our teams have that they can just share the knowledge of, hey, it's out there. Be more careful. Maybe it's insects, maybe it's snakes, maybe it's environmental things that we work in. In the area that we're in, more tractors on the road. I see that in my area, a lot more farm equipment and farm things going on to be aware of when we're driving. Of course, road work very prominent during this time of year, and we don't have to solve it all. We can talk about good ideas to solve it, but sometimes just bringing it up allowing us to remind each other that the summertime, just like the wintertime, brings a variety of extra hazards, or the potential for hazards. There's just more of it happening, like more tree trimming, more roof work, those things that we can protect against. Just ask the question. Encourage others to talk about it. Maybe you know someone that works for a company that doesn't have a great leadership safety program. You can mention it to them. Hey, just share that with your rest of your company. See if it takes something is better than nothing, one is greater than zero, all those great motivational terms of how a simple action can maybe make a difference. We may not know prevention is a weird thing. You You don't necessarily know you've made a difference, but you hope you have, and I hope I've made a difference today in the podcast. I hope maybe we learned something. I hope maybe, maybe we just shared with each other what a tough, tough start to summer we're having, and what can we do about it. Thanks for joining me. Really appreciate you joining me for this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. This is the official kind of like right before July 4 Edition. Please be careful with the fireworks. Hopefully you keep all your hand and fingers and all those things, be careful, and until next time we chat, stay safe.

Announcer: 19:18

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