Episode 210: Knowledge and Learning

This week on the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast, Dr. Mark French examines two tragic workplace fatalities that highlight a common issue: the critical role of training, hazard recognition, and collaborative safety leadership. The first incident involves a 20-year-old worker who died after becoming engulfed in a grain bin. While grain bin hazards are well known, Dr. French emphasizes that familiarity can create overconfidence, especially among experienced workers. He discusses the importance of ensuring employees truly understand the risks rather than assuming prior knowledge and stresses the need for rescue equipment, emergency planning, and community outreach to equip both workers and local responders for these high-risk events. 

The second story focuses on a 24-year-old welder who was fatally injured when a sealed paint drum exploded as he used a plasma cutter to remove its lid. Dr. French explains that hot work safety extends beyond controlling sparks and surrounding combustibles—it also requires understanding what is inside a container before cutting or welding begins. He encourages organizations to incorporate collaborative hazard reviews, checklists, and questioning into their work planning so hidden dangers are identified before work starts. 

Throughout the episode, Dr. French reminds listeners that safety leadership is about creating an environment where people continuously learn, ask questions, and challenge assumptions. Effective training, teamwork, and thoughtful planning help organizations recognize high-energy hazards before they become tragedies. By working together and remaining curious, leaders can better protect their people and prevent similar incidents from occurring. 

Transcript

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Mark French: 0:01

This week on the podcast, two industrial accidents in the news that caught my attention. That comes back to how do we train in the workplace? We're going to talk about these two incidents this week on the podcast.

Unknown: 0:33

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.

Mark French: 1:28

Welcome to this episode of the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast. So happy you've joined me! Always an honor to be part of your podcast rotation. This week, a couple of news articles just really stood out to me as I was reading through safety news and looking at things. And of course, sadly, and I hate this part, is that usually it's because of tragedy that safety is in the news, and so never, never do I intend to make light of these fatalities of these injuries, but I think it's important we talk about them. And even though a lot of the information that I would like to have it brings out a piece in me that I want to understand, I want to know? I want to ask tough questions. I want to understand how something can happen in the effort to learn and in effort to prevent. And that's what we do as as hopefully as leaders is we're looking for the very fundamental part of how do we protect our people. Once we protect our people, a lot of things take care of themselves. Our people can be empowered. Our people can be team builders. Our people can work and do well in what they do. And sometimes there's not resources available for what needs to happen. And in both of these cases, I really question training, and I question the knowledge base. I question how were they trained, how were they protected, and I think these two have very, even though very different incidents. There's some pieces of it that I think come together to tell a story, and we don't have all the information. I don't have all the information, so I have to take some assumptions, and to talk and to give that effort. And so, when I do these, I never mean to assume that anything right or wrong. All I know is what I can read, but I have a gut feeling that there is more there that we can talk about. So let's start. The first one is a grain bin entrapment, and these are unbelievably devastating. You just don't think about it until you see how fast an engulfment in a grain bin can happen. And we, I talked about one a couple of years ago, that actually happened local here, but it was a success story that the local volunteer fire department had been donated a rescue device, and they had trained to use it appropriately, and was able to get in there and they saved the person. They were able to get them out safely. Minor injuries. It was a very strong success story. Unfortunately, this one does not have that success to it. A 20-year-old man, 20 years old, inside a grain bin. Something happened. Something happened in the middle of the late afternoon, and it was reported that someone was trapped in this grain Bin rescue responders got there. They were he was taken to the the hospital. Unfortunately, died from the injuries. And there's actually a picture on their web page of the rescue. Someone had snapped a photograph of the rescue people, and and they're emptying the grain bin as fast as they. They're going in from the top. They're doing everything they can. I don't know how much time passed before someone was able to respond, or how fast before they recognized that he was in there and not coming out. And it can be extremely deceptive to think that the stability of the footing compared to how fast that something can change to begin that process of being engulfed and ingrained in something that you would think I can get out, I can run faster. And especially young person, there's there is that bias. There is that idea that I can overcome it. I've seen. I know this. I've been working around it, and more than likely, this 20-year-old had been around farming for all of his life, and he felt very well equipped. And maybe those around him felt that he was very well equipped. Unfortunately, we still have to say the words. We still have to do the training. We still have to make sure the information is there. And I remember I was sitting through a training that was not related to any of this, but it was just a basic training. And someone said, "If you have to ask the class if they understand what you're saying, you might as well go ahead and explain it just to make sure, because there's someone who isn't going to say they don't understand if everyone else says they understand, and that struck me as so true, and I'd never thought about it before. That if I am talking or giving a lecture or teaching or educating, and I have to go. Does everybody understand like the background? Does anybody know what this thing is, so I don't have to take the time to describe it? Do you already know what it is, or do you know this situation, or do you know this item, and that I haven't talked about? But I'm assuming you already have the base knowledge. Do you already know? If I have to ask the question, I should just go ahead and talk about it. I should go ahead and just cover it, just to make sure, because some very, very well documented psychological studies have shown that that peer pressure of of everybody else seems to know something, the person who doesn't know is more likely, highly more likely, not to speak up, just let it ride. Hope I'll figure it out later. Don't want to look foolish in front of everyone else. Now again, that may not be the case here. This, but I wonder how much training went into safety. Of you've got to have the right rescue equipment. You need to tie off, or you don't go in there, or we have some preparation, or there's some process before we enter a grain bin, and we don't just enter a grain bin. That's easy to say because the one that happened local to me was just a local farmer on his local farm. It wasn't occupational. It would never have been flagged by OSHA. It never would have been flagged by anything because it was a personal farm, personal worker, very small farm. The knowledge thought was there, and that's why I see a lot of really in changing a topic briefly. Is I really love some of the outreach and agricultural communities that the state and local are doing to make sure that training is out there, that the right equipment gets put into hands of people who may not know it exists, and that local fire departments, local volunteer fire departments, are being given equipment and training on how to rescue because it's a common occurrence that can happen. Being prepared for that worst-case scenario, so that our teams can respond appropriately. And in a rural area that's mostly agriculture, you don't know what you don't know. If you've always known that you can go into this grain bin, there's ways to do it safely. You just do it. But if someone teaches you a different way, if someone does an outreach and says, you know, if you wear this harness, if you have this rescue, if you have some communication, also if we train the local local responders on how to do how to do these rescues appropriately or what equipment they need, the higher there is much higher likelihood of success, and I think that is super important that we think about how do we make sure the information is there, and not just the information, not just pointing a finger and saying, "Oh, you don't know this, but how do we continually get the information, and how do we get the equipment? Because certainly my kids are getting older. They're wanting to get into their first jobs, and I know for a fact that a lot of organizations and there's been some studies on this. Like they'll they mix in safety training with regular training, and they don't say this is the safety part. This is what will protect your life. It's more taught as just process. Or sometimes the safety isn't even taught, and there's just a process to follow. And with any process, there becomes potential for shortcuts. And it's important we have conversations about the right way. What are the items that are most important? Which are the items that will protect you as you work, let's talk about the second case coming up on the second half of the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast.

Unknown: 10:30

Humanizing the workplace-it is the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast. What drives next level performance in your business? It's not just strategy; it's your people, and great performance starts with great leadership. At TSDA Consulting, we believe real leadership begins by creating a workplace where people feel safe, supported, and heard. TSDA Consulting is led by Dr. Mark French, a recognized leader in the workplace culture, who helps organizations bridge the gap between behavioral psychology and operational safety. Learn yourself, lead others, create safety. Visit TSDA consulting.com today.

Mark French: 11:14

Welcome back to the second half of the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast. The second story that I came across in the news that caught my attention. This one was a welder fabricator, 24 years old, very young, very talented. From what the story says, it had a real gift for not only music but also the work he did, and he loved the work he did. He worked at a nonprofit, doing work as a welder and fabricator, what appears happens is based on what information is available that there was an explosion, and the explosion was related to the fact that he was doing work using a plasma cutter to take the top off of a 55 gallon drum that it had paint in it, so at some point this was an old drum. It had paint using a plasma machine to cut the top off, according to the report. Which, given thinking about what potential was there, the potential for fire and explosion is certainly there with with paint and the fumes and inside a container, and you start cutting and welding. Then that is unfortunately one of the hardest things to think about when doing hot work. When performing work of that type, is not is thinking about all the things around you, and that's what you're trained to do a lot of times as the fire watcher. You're looking at everything around. What around the area of the weld, of the cut, of the hot works is clear. That it may have been even a designated hot work area. It may have been a very clean area with curtains or a designated spot. I don't know, but this is one that I honestly I have struggled with. I've seen this mistake happen, not to this level, but I've seen it happen where you don't think about what is in this container. Is it vented? Do we need to drill a hole in it, and I've seen some drums come in with different materials when I was in the chemical industry, especially that bulge, and that was an indicator that someone else had to be called. Like if you would inspect the drum before you did anything with it to see if there were any bulges or if there was anything that looked off, and there may not have been here, may have been perfectly fine, but it was the idea of thinking about what is inside it, and do we need to drill, like use a special drill bit to open a hole to vent it in a controlled atmosphere, put it under a hood, put it under a a some kind of a ventilation system, drill a hole, see if it vents before we do anything with it, and thinking about what's inside the work that we're doing-that is a critical aspect of one training and two knowledge. Because when I look at hot work areas, I always, I most of the time, it's fabricating; it's just welding things together. So you really think about what is around. Okay, we're welding two pipes together. They're brand new, no worries. Or we're putting these two joints together, or these two beams together, these two things together. It's when we're cutting that it it becomes more than just a hot work, it it becomes more of a process of understanding what's in it. Is it going to be tapping something? Are we doing a hot tap? What was in there? And I remember doing work where welding was being done to repair like a dumpster, and it set the. Contents of the dumpster on fire because the idea they didn't think about what's on the inside. They were thinking it's safe for me to weld on the outside. I got it, no problem. And then there's a fire on the inside, and it's so important to create that training and that recognition to think about what is inside, because it's not second nature to think about what's inside of something when you're doing that kind of work. It becomes second nature at some point, even with skilled people. Though sometimes that can slip. That piece of it has to be more recognized, more looked at, and even through a checklist process of what do you know what's on the other side of the weld, and that became a pretty stock question after we learned about it. It became the stock question because again, most of the time when we're doing these hot works, it is focused on the area around us, not letting fire spread, not getting a fire out of control, saving people through the process around it, and not thinking about that this could be like a line opening, like a line break process. And when we're breaking lines for the first time, we don't just cut into them; we drill a hole, or we understand, or we flush. But what about a sealed container. What about any container that we're working on to make that consideration of what's on the inside? And again, I point no fingers because that is a tough one to recognize. But it's really important, and I think this is where having a comprehensive safety briefing or some sort of collaborative event where before hazardous energy work is happening, that it's reviewed by a couple of people to ask those questions. Maybe someone didn't think to ask that question. Somebody else will. Someone else will review and say, "What's on the inside? Oh, that's paint. We might want to think about how we make sure it's clean, make sure it's vented, make sure it doesn't get something to happen negatively, and that comes with experience. It comes with training, and that's what we focus on in good people leadership. Is how do we do that? Highly unfortunate what happened, but it it it is something that I the reason it caught my attention so much is I feel it that this mistake can happen that under not knowing and not thinking about what could be on the other side? What is in it? Could it be detrimental? But having that review process, having a methodology that you're looking at the hazards. Now, just I've been reading Dr. Matthew Hollowell's book on energy safety and the energy wheel, and understanding like how much energy it truly takes to create a significant event versus a fatality event in trying to recognize where could there be energy of some magnitude waiting to be released, and in this case, it was unfortunately inside the drone. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast. Two very powerful stories about being able to recognize hazards as a team, having a process, having good learning, having good education, but most of all, working together to look at where where is the high potential, and how do we work together? How do we as leaders influence? How do we as humans try to pay, try to look out for each other just a little bit more? Again, thanks for joining me. Until next time, we chant. Stay safe.

Unknown: 19:18

Thank you for listening to the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast. More content is available online at www.tsdaconsulting.com. All the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training, or legal advice. This has been the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast.