Safety cannot be compromised

  • Published
  • By Noel Fagan
  • 60th AMW Safety
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  Don’t have time; can’t afford safety? 

Here’s some food for thought the next time you’re considering taking a shortcut. In the past 15 months, Travis has sustained 54 mishaps that resulted in 755 lost workdays at a cost of more than $700,000. 

These numbers do not include the lost work for the two off-duty and one on-duty fatal injuries nor do they account for an additional 295 injuries that range from minor medical treatment to restricted duty days. 

If this hasn’t grabbed your attention, now let’s add in deployments, leave, normal days off, etc. How do the remaining workers meet all the mission requirements – get the aircraft loaded on time, repair the broken water main, or fix the widgets? The list goes on. 

Workers start feeling compelled to go a little faster, take shortcuts, and perhaps use the wrong tool because it’ll take a few minutes to get the correct tool or review the tech data. Does this sound familiar? It’s an accident in the making. Times such as these are when risk management goes out the window. We lose sight of our Wingmen. We refrain from calling “timeout” because it just doesn’t feel right. 

Now take another look at the numbers. Do you know of someone that contributed to the lost workdays? Can you afford to not manage risk? Give some thought to how many mishaps could have been prevented with a little bit of risk management or just plain common sense. 

The next time the pressure is turned up, whether it’s peer pressure or the mission; take a brief pause to manage risk. Think ahead and anticipate the need to call “timeout.” Be the good Wingman. Your actions just might keep someone from being another number.