The editor of National Driller, Mr. Jeremy Verdusco, gives us column writers wide latitude in choice of subjects. This article was going to be about the marriage of my granddaughter, Samantha, to a fellow named Trevor, a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve, the event to take place in four days. However among the choice of subjects for this issue was safety. Oh boy, that’s one of my favorite subjects and one that I tend to be a little bit preachy on, so here goes.
I believe I could write half an issue with full pages about the subject of safety and, unfortunately, accidents in our industry. Some of these accidents were minor and some were major. Let’s face it, guys and gals who drill wells, set pumps and service them, our industry has a rather poor record from the standpoint of job safety. The things we do and the equipment we use are not super high-tech. The jobs we perform require skill — in fact, a lot of skill — and a lot of hard work, but the machines and mechanisms we use and install are pretty basic. That being said, it’s easy to see how we in the industry can become complacent and a little lax about the safety of ourselves and others around us. I’ve often felt that the industry most like ours is agriculture, where the equipment is large and expensive now-a-days and more complicated than it used to be, but still pretty straightforward. The agricultural industry, like our groundwater industry, has a poor safety record.