So a man in Toronto was encased in hot tar during an industrial accident: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/man-suffers-serious-burns-after-plunge-into-hot-tar-1.3088934 Essentially he was driving the truck with the tar and the reservoir ruptured, flooding the cab. He was breathing and conscious throughout the ordeal; I don't know if that's good that he never lost consciousness or terrible that he never blacked out. The worst accident not resulting in a fatality that I ever heard of happened when I was young. At the time my dad was working in Sudbury, installing environmental scrubbers on some of the chemical stacks. What was then called Inco was a company that produced nickel. I'm not clear on how exactly the process works, but I know that the plant in Sudbury contained large circular vats of smelt that the molten nickel was stored in. The vats could be covered - and often were - with lids that allowed workers to walk across them. Smelt also hardens very quickly when exposed to air, so if the lid isn't on a hard crust forms at the top of the vat. I want to say this was 1988/89, and it was winter, so snow was falling. A worker saw the snow on top of a vat and assumed it had a lid on it. He started to walk across it and the crust gave way. There was no lid, and he fell waist deep into the vat of molten nickel. He apparently hauled himself out of the vat, and I think he lost his legs from the waist down. I've never forgotten that, because to my nine year old self it sounded like hell on earth. Focus: What's the most serious accident you've seen or been involved with?
I was hit in a head-on collision when I was coming back from a ski trip when I was about 11 or 12. I was in the back seat of my dad's old civic that didnt have airbags. Thankfully the way the car hit us, I only had a few broken ribs from the seatbelt and my dad had a gash on his head and a fractured leg. The other person that hit us slid on the ice. They were pretty fucked up too from what I remember.
Ive been fortunate enough to not have to any sort of horrifying accidents or being in an industrial setting, but my Dad has some stories. He was an electrical engineer and for the first of his co-ops, he worked for US Steel in Gary. His first winter, he worked on the line for a month as sort of a training to understand. He was pouring molten steel into molds. If the molds were too cold from storage or whatnot, there would be a reaction and the steel would basically shoot out. Well a mold had been not been warmed before coming from storage, was cold, and upon contact, a stream of molten steel shot out and hit my dad in the corner of his eye. He has a scar right on the crease, but literally another inch to the left and he would have been blinded in that eye. Couple that with workers getting clipped by crain arms and falling 150 feet or accidentally touching live wires and being zapped like a bug, he decided it wasn't an environment he wanted to remain in, even though he would have been managing a plant early on and likely an executive in short order.
I think I've mentioned this before, but when I was in high school I used to bike to a co-op job I had in downtown London. One day I was on my way, and there was a red light (East on Baseline, crossing Wharncliffe, which was a 4 lane road). When the light turned green I started off while looking both ways and saw that a car coming from the right wasn't going to be able to stop for their red light... not even close. I hit the brakes, but the car to my left didn't, so they proceeded into the intersection with the new green light. The car from the right t-boned, hard, into the right side of the car to my left, and I was about 5' away from being sandwiched between the two of them. The old guy driving the car to my left was hit hard, thrown into an oncoming van, and the car bucked up into the air a few feet and came back down with the front totally smashed in. I got off my bike and went to see if he was ok, and when I got to the driver's side window, he turned and looked me, kind of confused, and asked, "what happened?". And his rear-view mirror was embedded, lengthwise, into his forehead, about 5" or so. FUCK ME. I had some basic first aid and knew enough to not pull the thing out and just wait for EMS, and some flower seller on the corner wanted to douse the wound in some antiseptic shit of some kind. Construction workers from a job site just down the road came running over, and basically told the flower guy to leave that shit alone, and then I spent a few minutes talking to the driver until the ambulance showed up. I then got on my bike and went to work. Once at work, I sat down at my desk, and threw up and shook like a motherfucker, now that the shock had worn off. I saw the old guy in the hospital where him and his wife thanked me for helping him, and the guy was fine after that... except for the fact he lost all concept of the number 7. It was weird, as his address had a 7 in it, and he could never remember it correctly.
In the early 90s I was up in NY State with a friend, in a small twin along the St. Lawrence, when we rolled up on a recent car accident. A few other cars were there, and we got out to see if we could help. It was another and daughter. The daughter had a broken collar bone and was sitting outside the car in shock. The steering wheel had been pushed back into moms chest, pinning her in place, and she was convulsing. There was clearly nothing we could do but wait for EMS. We found out later she died at the scene, and knowing I was watching her die still freaks me out. About 8 years later my fiancé and I were on our way to look at reception halls for our wedding. Traffic on the highway came to a standstill, and we could see some smoke up ahead. We sat there for an hour or so until the police directed us off the road through a police cut through. It turns out some dudes car got pinned against the median and burst into flames. He was trapped and conscious, with his legs pinned. The police and EMS got there ahead of the fire department. But they couldn't get him out and they ran through all of their fire extinguishers, even borrowing them from the cars around them. Despite all of their efforts he burned alive.
2 weeks to the day after I got my driver's license, I saw my first car wreck. I was at a stop sign and a dark green Xterra was coming around a turn on my left. It turned too sharp, swerved, over-corrected then veered at high speed into the curb cut going into a bank's parking lot. The car hit where the curb was ramping back up, launching it into the air. It hit about halfway up a light post, (so what, 10 feet or so? It was impressive!), knocking the post down as the car crashed back down to earth. The Xterra landed on its roof and skidded to a stop in the parking lot. I knew CPR and carried a 1st aid kit along with some extra blankets in my truck, so I threw it in reverse, pulled into the parking lot, idea being to go help. I parked by where the downed pole was, not really thinking anything of it, and soon as I got out of the car, a vehicle collided with the part of the light pole in the street, sending it spinning at a high rate of speed. It barely missed my legs and my truck, and if I was another two feet to the left I'd be a double amputee right now. So I go over to the Xterra with my blankets and 1st Aid kit, phone out to call 911. That's when I saw the blood on the windshield and realized how flat that SUV was. I asked the person next to me, who was on the phone, if that was 911. They said yes, so I put the towels and kit down and went home where I threw up. Didn't wanna see a body that day. Since then I've seen some fairly dramatic stuff. I've helped recover people from febrile seizures, I've been the first responded to a few car accidents that didn't end well, I've seen dead bodies when I was in the hospital and while I was there I met two people who had just arrived paralyzed from ATV accidents. About a year ago someone was driving down the road adjacent to our ranch, hit a tree, and they were burned alive. Nothing is as bad as your first dramatic accident though. After that, you either turn into someone who freaks the fuck out and just avoids it, or you become hardened to it and you're the calm one while everyone else is panicking. Fortunately I've learned to respond appropriately, which helped when my pre-me son was turning blue choking and I had to do the Heimlich.
A couple of guys my dad knew in the shop got killed because they didn't lock out a press before working on it, then got pressed themselves. The old man said there really isn't much left after getting hit with a fender press. I've seen the standard cuts/burns/busted fingers from working in a shop environment but nothing sticks out other than an incident involving a torch. Dealer provided uniforms are usually a poly blend and are not flame resistant in the least, my first dealer I worked at a guy was cutting exhaust pipe and a piece of slag fell in his pocket causing his shirt to go up in flames around him. Burns all over his chest and neck, it's the reason I wear a cotton undershirt every day to work. That poly melted into his skin and they had to peel it of. Fuck that.
I spent ten years as a paramedic, so I've seen some fucked up stuff, burned up bodies, heads blown off, etc. One that came to me while reading the previous posts was a head on collision. We were first unit on scene and look in the first car. Driver had the steering wheel embedded in her chest, no pulse. Nothing we can do, shes fucking dead. I move on to the next car where the fire department is. Driver is unresponsive, pulseless, but we can work her. Except I can't get the guys to help. One is pacing outside the car, crying, another is in thenbackseat, crying, and I'm trying to get this woman out. Thank God the next unit pulled up and we got her out. We knew she was dead for reasons I'll spare you, but it was one of moments you have to do something or you'll go crazy. I found out the reason the firemen were so distraught is she was related to them one guy was her husband and the other her brother in law. That one haunts me still, 15 or so years later.