After lunch, we were putting a sheet of plastic on the gable wall, the “C” section, to cover up the glass wool we had just installed in that morning and Shaun was crouched down taking the shallow triangle point right down into the right hand side corner, right under the slope of the roof.
Shaun moves towards the gable
Unfortunately, Shaun made a rare mistake in not fully realising to where he was located and he was bending down, to fit under the slope of the roof and stepped over the wooden footplate that was screwed to the floorboards that defines the edge of the stair case. We had put up a hand rail barrier along most of the stair hole, only leaving a small 18inch gap unbarricaded because it was very low down the slope of the roof!!
Stairs are protected by rails
Shaun managed to find that small gap, while bent over into a crouching position and stepped out into thin air.
Puts his foot out thinking he has reached the end of the stairs
He said that nothing special occurred, like “everything slowed down” or “my life flashed before my eyes”
He said, “it was a normal sensations and I remember falling through the air, then crashing into the last couple of steps of the stairs and sliding down the rest of the way to the floor.”(the photo below may look bad but it is not, Shaun is just recovering his breath)
and tumbles down to land at the bottom of the stairs
(Another point to make about the photo, We went back a week later to take that picture and Shaun laid back down in approximate position, in an artistic pose, for this blog report!!)
Stephen tried to warn Shaun but he wasn’t quite looking in the right direction, was sorting out his own end of that black plastic piece and his shout came too late. He immediately came thundering across the First Floor and thumped very very quickly down the stairs. Shaun remembers all that and “he wanted to know whether I was hurt anywhere. I was breathing in lots of short sharp breaths, waiting for the shock to wear off.”
Stephen took off Shaun’s dust mask and carefully took off his helmet too. Shaun was able to talk more or less normally, to report that he hadn’t broken anything and just banged up. No sharp or stabbing pain anywhere, just a couple of broad islands of aches. Mostly on the upper shoulder blade and upper left arm. Second one located just above his waistline on the left side, and a final minor ache on his leg, upper left thigh. No cut or abrasions anywhere!
After about 5 minutes, he was able to stand up and walk back home, while holding Stephen’s arm.
As you can imagine, that somewhat put an end to our work for this day.
Actually, it stopped our work for the entire week!!
We switched over to doing electronic and database design work instead.
It has been five days now, it is Saturday, as this report was written, and Shaun reports that he has greatly improved and almost all the aches has gone. There was very little bruising on the surface, but there is still deeper aches still at the moment.
This is one episode that we DO NOT wish to repeat !!
