On 22 August 2016, nine years ago today, I walked onto a UK demolition site; something I had done hundreds of times before, and have repeated hundreds of times since.
That visit took place exactly six months after the Didcot Disaster claimed the lives of four demolition workers. Safety was at the forefront of my mind, and the mind of the site supervisor that gave me my site induction.
As we walked from the site office to the vantage point from which I was intending to film the demolition operation, we spoke about the tragedy of Didcot; about the lives lost; about the bodies that still lay unrecovered.
With hindsight, that now feels like a foreshadowing. Because half an hour later, I was leaving that site in an ambulance; the victim of a freak accident.
The video below shows the aftermath (and is probably not for the squeamish). But, if you’d like to hear more about that fateful day, you can check out the audio podcast here.
