Thursday, June 19, 2014

Safety Equipment Fails Texas Tower Climber


Tuesday, June 17th a 28-year old man fell from a cell phone tower in San Angelo, Texas. During the investigation, detectives determined that the man fell as a result of an issue with his safety equipment. “What they found was that when he was working on the tower making some adjustments to his safety equipment there was some type of issue…and at that point he fell,” SAPD Public Information Officer Tracy Gonzalez said. The man worked for MTSI, a full wireless network deployment and maintenance company, which is based in Richardson, TX. The man was working on a tower of 140-feet, and is a fixture in the downtown area and was originally built to mount multiple large two-ton feed horns that were part of the old AT&T long distance TDM network called “1 plus.” Since AT&T deactivated the old “1 plus” network years ago, these towers have been sold off to various property owners and investors. Charlie Guyer, VP Communications for Goodman Networks, AT&T’s contractor for tower construction and maintenance issued a statement. “The company has just been informed of a fatality involving one of our subcontractors Microwave Transmission Systems (MTSI). We extend our deepest condolences to the family. We are conducting an investigation and are fully cooperating with local, state and federal authorities,” he said. Guyer said that his company routinely subcontracts with other companies to handle tower work all over the country.

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