Dangerous Building Practices in Thailand

[friscofrankie]

Damn! i got four Thais, a ladder, a thirty inch chainsaw and some poor tree goin' at it out under my window and the camera batteries are dead again!!! Fuckin' tree's winnin'

[dirtydog]

Construction accident kills Thai worker in S'pore
Published on Jan 20 , 2006


A Thai worker was killed when part of a brick wall collapsed and pinned him to the ground at a Singapore


construction site, officials said Friday.




Promsri Khampan, 41, had been levelling some freshly laid cement when the half-tonne brick slab, part of a retaining

wall on the uncompleted bungalow, came loose after heavy rain.




The Singapore Civil Defence Force had to break up the slab before Promsri could be extricated, but efforts to revive him failed.



Two teams from the Ministry of Manpower are investigating the cause of the accident and checking the safety standards at the rest

ofthe site.



Promsri's death came the day after parliament passed a new law to make Singapore a safer place to work. It goes into effect in March

with the aim of halving the workplace fatality rate.


The law carries tougher penalties for unsafe practices.

[dirtydog]

Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Worker in grave condition after electrocution

PATONG: In a dramatic accident that took place in full public view, a young man was electrocuted and severely injured on Monday afternoon while hanging off the side of the Thaweewong Rd Post Office, welding a new sign.

A bolt of high-voltage electricity shot through Roong-atit Piboon, 18, from Surat Thani, after he swung his arc welder and accidentally touched an uninsulated power cable.

K. Roong-atit was hanging by a safety harness from a metal railing attached to the second story of the building, working on the sign below. When he was electrocuted, the harness prevented him from falling, and he slumped, unconscious, over the sign.

Kathu police immediately called the Kusoldham Rescue Foundation, members of which climbed onto the roof of an adjacent bar, brought K. Roong-atit down and rushed him to hospital.

Panya Song-la-or, a worker with the foundation, later told the Gazette, “He was still slumped over the advertising sign, supported by his safety harness, when we arrived. His clothes were still burning.”

K. Roong-atit was taken first to Patong Hospital for emergency first aid and then transferred to Vachira Phuket Hospital.

Theera Phrueksanan, Manager of the Patong Electricity Office, told the Gazette, “The accident was caused by negligence. The worker swung his welder and it touched a wire that was not protected by insulating covers.”

The power authority, he explained, provided and installed insulating covers, but workers were supposed to move them as they worked, so as to be continually protected.

“These covers are movable but the proper safety procedure was not observed. They should have been put in place near the working area for maximum protection. A circuit breaker cut the power [after K. Roong-atit touched the cable] but the damage was already done.”

K. Roong-atit is presently listed as being in a “grave” condition with severe burns and possible internal injuries.

phuket gazette

[Dougal]

Originally Posted by dirtydog

K. Roong-atit is presently listed as being in a “grave” condition

Almost as good as the 'Burning Question at Local Crematorium' which appeared in my local paper a few years go.

[dirtydog]

Thsi is the local sub police station at the end of Soi Thepasrit, like the way the electric cables go thru the roof and then carry on out thru the otherside

[Curious George]

DD,
Thanks for this. I've got to pass this along to my retired electrician brother-in-law in Texas. He was with a local union in Cook County, Illinois (Chicago area). You couldn't even begin to describe the building codes enforced there. Unbelievable!

[Fabian]

Why don't they put the cables underground?

[RDN]

These guys were welding in Tescos Phuket during normal working hours.

My Thai isn't that good, but I think I heard a little boy saying "Daddy! Look at that bright light! Daddy? Daddy? Where are you daddy? I can't see!"

[Sanuk Canuk]

Hilarious thread. Best stupid welding story I have heard of was at a mine in Canada where guys were using Oxy-Acetylene in an operating underground coal mine. The mine was the victim of a large underground explosion a month or so later something like 20-30 miners killed. Mine was shut down.

[dirtydog]

Well this movie is from a non 3rd world country, just goes to show things can go wrong anywhere.

[RDN]

Bugger! If only I had my camera on me today. I woke up this morning to total silence. No air con. No fan. No electricity. So I went into Rawai on the partly completed new road they are making... ... to find that workmen had lowered some of the telephone and power lines so that some were hanging very low and others were lying on the side of road.

At the end of a soi next to a 7-11, people on moto-cy's were ducking under these cables - and were kindly assisted by a workman who was treading on some cables that wouldn't lie flat while lifting the others so that they would slide gently over the heads of the riders.

The good news is I saw no bright flashes or dead bodies.

[dirtydog]

This picture I took in Koh Chang, the lorry was unloading the digger to get on the ferry, the digger got a bit wrong and swung the front wheels of the lorry over the big ditch to the left on the picture, the lorry driver started screaming at him

[RDN]

^^ Here is the 7/11 after the cables had been tidied up - and lifted back onto the poles:

[dirtydog]

Our News is Always New

LATEST NEWS

Monday 24th September 2006

Construction worker injured as he comes into contact with a live wire on top of a water tower.
A nasty accident now from a construction site in North Pattaya. Police and rescue workers were called to the location in the early hours of Monday Morning after receiving reports of a man who had received an electric shock and required urgent medical attention. A rescue plan for the victim was put into operation when rescuers realized that he was on the top of a water tank some 30 meters up. The man had sustained burns to his mouth and head and was slowly brought down from the water tower. Fellow workers mentioned that he climbed the water tower to fix a pump which had malfunctioned. As he was tampering with the pump he failed to notice some exposed live wires which made contact with him causing the injuries which are not life threatening.

[Spin]

concrete trucks are heavy, especially when they are delivering and are full of concrete



Its rainy season, so that means the going might get soft.....



In the end they started to dump the concrete in the ditch to lessen the weight of the truck. Women with buckets were scooping up the concrete and moving it by hand to the building site.

[dirtydog]

Construction worker dies in front of friends
The staff of Regal Hope Villas informed the Pattaya police that a colleague had died in one of the houses at the village, located on Pratamnak Road, and requested the police to come investigate. This incident occurred on 1st December at 6.45 pm.


The police and Sawang volunteers found the place to be a 2 storey townhouse and the body was in front of the stairs to the second floor.
Mr. Naret, aged 25, a friend of the deceased stated the man is Mr. Somkid, aged 22. Mr. Naret stated that they were all construction workers who were hired to work on this house. When they were sitting on the stairs working, Mr. Somkid had a heart attack and slid down the stairs to the first floor. When he saw this, he quickly ran out to inform Mr. Anthony Pisher, aged 61, a British national and the owner of the house who then called an ambulance; but they were too late as Mr. Somkid had died.
The police sent Mr. Somkid’s body out for autopsy to find the cause of death and will contact his relatives.

pattaya people

[Dougal]

These two shots are actually from the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh rather than Thai.



These guys are a looong way up.

[dirtydog]

Here we have an accident waiting to happen in Ban Chang, a nice ladder made from from rough cut tree branches

[Thetyim]

Not really dangerous but certainly a bit odd