Safety Stories Around Me 01------An Scar on Old Li’s Leg

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This post was last edited by slll611 on 2016-11-22 at 21:34. The day before yesterday, during the employee health check-up, I noticed a scar on Old Li’s leg, just above his ankle. Out of curiosity, I asked him about it, and he told me the following story: It was over twenty years ago; at that time, Old Li was still called Little Li, and he had been working in the factory for only a short while. But he was very eager to learn, and quickly mastered the procedures and basic operations related to his job. One afternoon that winter, while on his shift that started at four o’clock, Lao Li went to the tank area after taking over his shift to check the dehydration status of the oil tanks, in order to prevent leaks caused by frozen dehydration valves. When he checked tank No. 506, he found that the dehydration valve would not open; he concluded that the water contained in the liquefied gas inside the tank had frozen the valve. In such cases, steam should be used to melt the ice inside the valve; if this situation persists for too long and an excessive amount of water accumulates, it can easily cause the valve to crack. There were steam nozzles at each pipe row in the tank area, connected by long rubber hoses. He picked up one of the hoses and opened the steam valve. Since the hose was long, the condensate water inside the pipeline had not yet been completely drained, so no steam came out. Thinking that the valve was not open far enough, he increased the valve’s opening further. Once the condensate water was completely drained, steam suddenly burst out, causing the hose to swing violently. He failed to hold it properly, and the hose fell; its outlet pressed directly against his leg, and the high-temperature steam burned his leg through his pants. After the injury healed, this scar remained. ““I was careless,” said Old Li. He had also heard of many accidents resulting from improper use of steam that caused burns, but he thought such things happened to other people, so he never took it seriously. “The color of this scar is now very light, but since it happened to me personally, the memory remains very vivid; I often think about it, though maybe other people don’t pay as much attention to it. Many people these days act in this way: they listen to what happens to others and move on, rarely learning from it, and only realize their regret when the same thing happens to them. What Old Li said really touched me. When we study other people’s accidents or watch videos of them, we should truly relate those experiences to our own work and earnestly learn from them. We shouldn’t merely feel pity for the horrifying scenes and consequences of those accidents, express a few words of regret, or say something superficial like “we must learn from these accidents” as mere conversation topics during leisure time. In this way, it’s impossible to truly draw lessons from those accidents. We should regard others’ accidents as our own lessons.