May 29, 2008
Fatal bandwidth: 6 cell tower deaths in 5 weeks
There’s a price to pay for the wireless networks we take for granted. Fortune reports.
"... Falls from high towers are not unheard of in this business. But for more than four months — between Dec. 5 and April 11 — the industry was fatality free.
Then in April, as Wireless Estimator president Craig Lekutis notes with alarm, five workers fell to their death from mobile phone towers in the space of 12 days. Guilford’s death in May was the sixth this year.
Accidents like this often come in spurts, says Lekutis, an industry veteran with 27 years experience. There were 10 fatal falls from elevated structures of all kinds (including TV, electrical and water towers) in 2007, and a record 18 in 2006. But tthis year’s concentrated run of cell tower accidents, he says, was extraordinary."
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