Asplundh Fatality in St. Louis

[rgnizr]

Thoughts and prayers go out for another fallen brother.....

UNIVERSITY CITY, MO

Police identify electrocuted worker

Police identified an AmerenUE subcontractor who was electrocuted Sunday, 6/18/06, as Ronald Brown, 73, of Farmington, Mo.

Brown was killed while repairing electrical wires atop a utility pole in the 1200 block of George Street, University City police said.

The accident happened about 9:15 a.m., police said. Police said the man was taken to an area hospital, where he died.

[Trampbag]

Our thoughts and prayers to the family.

[jerseyslave]

Dear God, 73 years old...

[Stanman, at ComEdy Il.]

First of all, my sympathy with everyone involved!

73 seems a bit old in this line of work. Hope I live that long!

[CHICAGO HAND.]

Got A Splicer Down South Who Is "62".

[Trampbag]

Since 911 I have run into a lot of retired linemen who have been forced back to work because their sizable pension was severely eroded in the aftermath, in some cases as much as 70%. You gotta feel for a guy still working past 65 when he retired in his late 50’s, I’ll tell you it was a fair number of these.

I don’t know if this hand was one of these, or the very few that really want to continue beyond the mid 60’s, but either way, our thoughts to the family.

60 is young in our company, 25 years is no seniority. I have actually seen a lot retiring now only because our company got so bad.

God bless him...........I hope he was working because he wanted too.

I thought you had to retire by 70 at the latest?

[graybeard]

My thoughts and prayers to the family, but I thought Asplund just did tree trimming

[Viperexaf]

they did for a long time beard, it's just been recently that they started trying to do line work and from what i've heard then this is not the first fatility they've had. My opinion they need to go back to tree trimmin and leave the line work to those of us that know how to do it and do it safely

I worked with Ron a couple of years ago before Asplundh got the contract with AmerenUE...
He had retired from AmerenUE and came to the contracting world...
He was not out here for the money, he was financially secure...
He loved the work...the comardarie...the storm calls and wherever that might take him...
To look at him you would have guessed his age at being 53 not 73...
He loved to climb and was quite capable ,if anyone hesitated or balked, Ron would be gearing-up 45ft. or 90 no matter...
From what I am told , he was on storm repair in the backlots...4KV, he was up the pole with an apprentice....they had changed out a transformer and were connecting it...he was suited up with gloves and sleeves and had brought the primary riser down to cut it to length when he contacted his side with the riser and was touching the secondary rack with his other side...
As this was passed on to me second hand I was not able to get answers to my questions...
It is no surprise that he would be up the pole with an apprentice and after a night of storm work...
He will be missed....
My thoughts and prayers to his family....