You’ve seen it in the movies. Two people are fighting, and one of them takes a fatal tumble down the stairs. These fatal tumbles happen in real life too, even when nobody is fighting. Unfortunately, both fatal and non-fatal injuries from falls on stairs happen in construction and maintenance too.
The good news is these falls are preventable, and — with some diligence — your workplace can be free of deaths or injuries resulting from falls on stairs. OSHA provides stairway-related requirements in 1926.851, but it’s kind of minimal. To prevent stair-related injuries, you, your company, and your coworkers must go beyond OSHA. You must work together to eliminate both unsafe conditions and unsafe acts.
Unsafe working conditions
You may actually be working while on the stairs, not just using them as a means of getting from one elevation to another. For example, you’re installing or maintaining egress lighting. You probably want that space off-limits to foot traffic, both for their protection and for yours.
Is the solution to lock the stairway doors? Not if those stairs are part of the fire exit system. Try this, instead:
• Affix a sign on each stairway door (on the entry side) above and below your working elevation stating the stairs are temporarily out.
• Use red barrier tape to keep people out.
• Leave signs and barrier tape in place until it is safe for people to transit through where you were just working. If you need to remove scaffolding or ladders, it’s not yet safe.
• Remove signs and barrier tape immediately after clearing the work area for people to enter it again.
• In the event of a fire alarm during the out of service period, immediately clear the stairs of equipment then remove the signs and tape barriers. Ask people to help, even if they aren’t in your crew.
Clutter is a big safety issue on stairs. Like electrical equipment closets, stairs are often misused as storage areas. Mops, ladders, cords, boxes, chairs, and various other items seem to find their way to stairways. Often, they are placed not on the steps but on the landings, as if this area is just wasted space the architect added by mistake.
Those landings fulfill several purposes, including being able to turn the corner while bearing a stretcher. Ensure they are clear. If you must work in a stairway area and you or your equipment will occupy that landing space but not block the stairs, do you leave the stairway in service? It’s probably OK to do that. However, on the entry side of the doors above and below the landing area, post a warning sign.
The stairs themselves can be cluttered. If you’re running a power cord on the actual stairs, that’s clutter even if you taped the cord to the far side of the stairs to keep it out of the way. For a temporary situation, this is OK; again, post those warning signs.
With any luck, any scaffolding you must erect will be on a landing. Sometimes, however, scaffolding must be erected on stairs. This requires an asymmetrical construction to ensure a level working platform.
Make sure the footing is secure. If you fall off a 6-ft scaffold, that may not be such a big deal on level ground; risk of serious injury is there, but it’s low. However, make that same fall from a 6-ft scaffold that’s on the stairs leaving the 12th floor, and it will end badly for you. Keep people out with those signs and tags.
If the signs and tape don’t keep people out, an attendant at each door is the safest solution. Or, if the company has designated fire exit leaders, the doors could be locked if the designated leader on each floor has a key; discuss with the facility manager or safety director.
Unsafe walking conditions
What if you’re not working on those stairs but are just using them to get from one place to another? In many cases, there’s a temporary condition to which your best response is to stay out.
For example, people are transporting compressed gas cylinders on those steps. The doors should be blocked, and there should be tape. But if there’s not, that doesn’t mean you can use the stairs.
At an Illinois nuclear power plant that was under construction, two men were transporting a cart of compressed gas bottles. One of the bottles still had its regulator on it (a clear safety violation). Because the stairs were not taken out of service during the transport, people pushed past these two men and as that was happening the cart got knocked down the steps. The bottle with the regulator hit something that broke the regulator off. This sent the bottle smashing through multiple cylinder block walls. It is never safe to use the stairs when compressed gas is being transported on those stairs.
Other materials and equipment pose danger also. Consider two guys carrying drywall up the stairs while you are coming down. Move to the landing, and let them pass.
If a stairway is busy with materials and crew members going up and down, see if another stairway is available.
Be on the lookout for loose portable cords, open containers of paint or solvent, and other items that create tripping hazards or spill hazards. Find the person responsible and ask that person to help you fix the problem. If you can’t find who slopped that portable cord across the steps, unplug it, and remove it from the stairs.
Unsafe acts
Even if stairways are free of unsafe conditions, a single unsafe act can spell tragedy. Most cases of injury can be followed back directly to an unsafe act.
Your first line of defense is your attitude. Keep these points in mind:
• We are familiar with stairways. The familiarity doesn’t make them risk-free.
• You can fall on a stairway, whether going up, down, sideways, or just standing there.
• Falling on a stairway usually means falling repeatedly, step after step; it’s multiple falls, not just one.
• Those repeated falls typically occur with a tumbling pattern, which means repeated blows to the spinal column; full paralysis may result.
Unsafe acts include:
• Using a flight of stairs on which other people are transporting materials, such as loads of drywall sheets or bottles of compressed gas. Either wait for them to pass, or find a different stairwell.
• Carrying an object that is too big and/or too heavy. Not only are you at increased risk of a fall, people below you are at increased risk from being struck by an object.
• Leaving something on a stair step. But what if you need to route a portable cord along that stairway? Route the cord to one side, and tape it down. There’s always a way to reduce unavoidable hazards like this one. Never run a cord across a step.
• Running up or down the stairs. From Newton’s Laws of Motion, we know that the faster you go, the more momentum you have. If you are walking in a controlled fashion and catch your foot on something, it’s much easier for you to stop and catch yourself than if you were running.
Electrified stairways
Ensure your electrical devices are properly guarded. This includes portable cords that are unprotected from mechanical damage. Welding cables and portable lights also must be properly guarded. Your electrical distributor probably carries exactly what you need to guard these and other items.
Many people assume the stairway, being metal, is “ground,” so there’s no risk of electrifying it. That is a false assumption. Electricity is not seeking to get back to ground, it’s seeking to get back to its source. There are many points of impedance between that stairway and the source. So, there is a big difference of potential.
This has additional significance for welding. Don’t attach the “ground” clamp to the stairway and assume zero potential. You will electrify the stairway.
Making a safe place
Stairways don’t have to be dangerous places. When they are, it’s because of unsafe conditions, unsafe acts, or a mix of the two. Unsafe conditions are often created by unsafe acts — for example, someone strings a portable cord across a step.
To make every stairway a safe place to work, put the focus on unsafe acts. Don’t let familiarity with stairways lead to complacency that results in becoming familiar with a tragedy.
Lamendola is an electrical consultant located in Merriam, Kan. He can be reached at [email protected].
