Last week we were exposed to yet another reason as to why it’s imperative to continue using blade guards on saws. Basically, you could kill somebody… maybe yourself, maybe someone else. And the bigger the blade, the more imperative it is you use a guard – at least that’s the takeaway we get from this story. It seems that a hunk of sharp metal literally fell from sky and cratered into a parking lot in Bossier City, Louisiana. The event was witnessed by a man eating at a nearby restaurant who called the police and sparked a series of news reports and conjecture as to where the metal came from and how it fell. The piece of metal, weighing around 50 pounds, was a full 3 feet in diameter, with a curved edge and what looked like metal gears on the inside. It was initially thought to be something from an airplane that had fallen off. After city officials contacted the FAA it became apparent that the material was not something that would have been part of an aircraft of any kind. The mystery was solved when someone at Northwest Pipe company saw the report on the news and recognized the metal.
“It was a few feet from a parked car,” Darnell said. “And, being the size that it was, it would have crushed the roof of the car and probably hurt anybody inside”
– Daniel Darnell, witness to the event
As it turns out, someone at the company was using a large saw blade to cut through steel pipe. The blade shattered and went skyward. Northwest Pipe Company is located just a few hundred feet west of where the object landed. Why on earth the piece of metal was not investigated at the time of it shattering is staggering, considering how much damage a piece of metal of that size could do to a piece of property, or worse, a person in its path.
Fortunately, no one was hurt by the piece of blade and the only damage was a couple of deep gashes in the parking lot. Our takeaway from this is that blade guards are incredibly important and it’s amazing to think of what this story could have been had the blade impacted with a person. We’re glad this is an object lesson and not one based on tragic circumstances.
