ITS ALL ABOUT SAFETY!!

Evening peeps, I have a hectic few days thinking about what article should I write. While I was cracking my head on the proper topic, suddenly my dad came up to me and said ‘Shafiq’, I have an interesting story for you. . My father then related the incident. My father worked as a Manager and this company had branches nationwide. We will not disclose the name of the organization. And yeah Company name is P&C! Here how it goes…

A few years ago a very tragic and sad incident happened in a company. In this particular company there was a generator set at the back portion of the office near to the toilet area. This company was a service company and they have alternate power supply at the counter area and to back up the computers. They also had this generator set which will also be switched on whenever there is no power supply for the benefit of the back room office operations. On this unfortunate day, the company had sudden interruption of electricity and as normal the officer switched on the generator set.

This officer who went out for field visit returned to the branch and noticed that there was no power supply but he wanted to desperately use the toilet. His colleague warned him that the generator set is on and that the toilet area is very smoky. This colleague also told this officer that it is dangerous to use the toilet at this juncture.

This officer told him that he is in “emergency-nature call ” and that will be out of the toilet in a short while. Only about half an hour later that this colleague realized that the officer has not come out of the toilet. He immediately notified the other officers and they immediately went to the toilet area. The area was fully of smoke but they managed to break the toilet door. This guy was already unconscious. They carried this young officer to the nearby clinic about 100 metes away but was already pronounced dead on arrival. The death was due to inhalation of smoke and carbon monoxide.

The sad thing about the incident was none of the staff and manager was aware that the premises had a separate generation room with facilities but never realized it. This room was used as a store instead. If only the safety regulations was followed and in this case, the generator set was placed in this special room a life would have been spared. This generator room has an exhaust fan and out-let for release of smoke.

Basically, the safety regulations was not followed and even if the officers could have opened the rear door near the toilet to allow the smoke to move out, the life of the young officer could have been saved.. There was also no emergency sign to notify that the generator set is in use and to warn staff not to use the toilet. Probably, there was lack of safety training and the consequences when the generator set was son etc. So guys in future do BEWARE everything that is near you because of one mistake a person will get injured or maybe die.

That’s all from me. Till next time

Roger n out! SHAFIQ