Our children and grandchildren will not believe what passes as demolition safety today.
There will come a time when our children and our grandchildren will look back at the demolition industry of today in a collective disbelief; the kind of disbelief with which we view our forebears’ decision to send children down mines.
But such a retrospectively critical view of modern safety standards will be of scant consolation to the friends and families of the nine demolition workers currently lying in a Baltimore hospital following an unplanned collapse at a disused steel works.
When we look back upon a history of child labour, slavery, global conflicts and the enforced extinction of entire animal species, we do so from a lofty “they didn’t know any better” standpoint that forgives past crimes through a plea of ignorance.
We have no such defence, however. We DO know better. We have set in place risk assessments and method statements; appointed safety advisors and controllers; created a burdensome level of training and best practice monitoring. And yet men are still hurt on today’s demolition sites. Men still die.
We have at our disposal unprecedented levels of technology coupled with the collective knowledge of generation upon generation of demolition experts. We possess the ability destroy buildings using microwaves and water and via remotely controlled machines that would have been beyond the dreams of even our most recent ancestors.
Against such a favourable background, the continuing litany of accidents and fatalities seems somehow worse; somehow less forgivable.
When our offspring look back at this period in our industry, it will do so in a head-shaking disbelief. The Goddess of the Eternal Court of History will smile and tear to tatters any defence that we put forward. We are guilty. And history will not absolve us.
