A man working for an AT&T contractor fell to his death Monday afternoon from a tower at a Damascus, MD water treatment plant. In the same hour, another man was electrocuted in Wadesboro, NC, as he helped decommission a tower.
Montgomery County, MD police were called at 2:44 pm Monday, after a man had fallen while working on a cellular tower at the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission wastewater treatment plant in Damascus. Daniel Patrick Harrison, 25, of Indianapolis, IN, was dead at the scene. WSSC spokesman Luis Maya told Inside Towers on Tuesday Harrison was working for one of AT&T’s contractors. The carrier is one of several vendors on the tower which is owned by the water utility that serves Washington, DC’s two neighboring Maryland counties, Montgomery and Prince George’s.
Summar Goodwin, a spokeswoman with MOST – Maryland Occupational Safety and Health – said last evening Maryland investigators were “currently on the scene” and that because it is an on-going investigation, no additional comments would be made. MOST is investigating the death as a workplace accident.
Details about the accident, and the tower’s owner, along with Harrison’s employer, were not immediately available.
In Wadesboro, NC, the North Carolina Department of Labor told Inside Towers an employee of RH Construction was electrocuted while holding a cable attached to a crane that came in contact with a live electric wire. The accident happened about 2 pm Monday. Local officials learned of the accident Monday evening at a statewide annual safety awards dinner. Speaking to some 50 banquet guests at Oliver’s Hometown Restaurant & Bar in Wadesboro, Cherie Berry, commissioner of the state’s department of labor, told the annual Safety Awards Dinner ‘this is just the reason we push safety standards.” Berry was attending the event to present Perdue Farms of Rockingham, NC an award for 3 million hours worked without lost time.
No additional details about the unidentified tower worker, or the owner of the tower, were available.
As news of the tragedies spread throughout the tower industry yesterday, Atlanta Working Capital’s Scott P. Brown probably said it best in a note to Inside Towers: “Wow. Prayers to their families. So sorry.”
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