What trauma looks like

by Leah-Ann Maybee

Leah-Ann at work

I was fast asleep when my phone rang. It was still an hour before I was supposed to wake up for the night shift, so I was a little groggy when I answered. That was until I heard the words “You need to get here now. It’s bad”. I was awake.

As a safety professional I always hoped that I would never get that call, but I did. It was a Friday late afternoon, almost quitting time for the day shift guys, and it was rush hour. The call was about an incident that just happened on my work site. I couldn’t get dressed fast enough, I couldn’t get to the site fast enough and yet, when I did get there, I wished for an instant I wasn’t there yet.

Nothing in my career had prepared me for this. The scene I came upon was horrific, intense and chaotic. The dump box of one dump truck had tipped over and crushed the cab of the other next to it. The result was obvious and caused my heart to sink. That day, for whatever reason, two trucks ended up staged side-by-side. The first thing through my mind was, “Do we have a procedure to not stage trucks side-by-side? Yes we do”. The reason we don’t stage trucks side-byside is to prevent this exact thing from happening; to avoid the consequences of one tipping due to uneven or unstable ground conditions or due to material hang ups or material that is not uniform, like rocks.

According to the crew, on this particular day one truck got backed in and started to dump, but then stopped for an unknown reason. As this happened, the other truck was being spotted back beside the first truck. They thought the first truck was finished dumping and was going to be leaving, so they backed the other truck in. Unfortunately, the first truck did not leave and as the second truck started to dump, the material in the box appeared to hang up in the trailer. This caused it to become unstable and tip over onto the cab of the truck beside it. The driver of the first truck was crushed and later pronounced dead at the site.

There are a lot more details involved that lead up to the event. I typically share these in safety meetings, training or when speaking with people who don’t fully grasp why safe work procedures are in place and need to be adhered to. Each time I share the details, even 11 years later, I still get emotional. As I am writing this article, I can see and hear everything that went on that day and I find myself starting and stopping because this is what trauma looks like. The trauma is the catch in your throat while you are sharing what happened and why. The trauma is the flashbacks you get when you are working around the situation that caused the incident (for me it is dump trucks). Trauma is the nightmares you have of the scene, of the people involved and you are trying to stop it but can’t. Trauma is not something I wish on anyone because it rears up when you least expect it and it changes you.

The most important reason that I chose occupational health and safety as a profession is because I want to protect people. I have been told many times in my career by managers, superintendents, foremen, and even friends, that I “care too much” and I “take things too personally” at work. I will always take people’s well-being personally. That won’t change, even if it means ruffling some feathers.

With the incident I’m speaking about, I’d been on the work site for about 10 months. I knew the crew involved very well. I saw them every day. But I didn’t know the drivers involved. Why do I mention this? I can’t imagine where I would be if I had known them. There is a saying in safety that serious incidents have a ripple effect. We obviously know that the people directly involved and their family will be affected, we know that first responders and medical personnel will be affected, and we know that co-workers will be affected. I am part of that ripple, my friends and family are part of that ripple because they were the ones that were there to help me get through the event and aftermath.

In my case I went into a dark place for a long time. It’s strange that at the time I continued to do my job. About two months after the incident I went to another company, and eight months later, on to yet another company. I continued to work and felt I was, for the most part, doing a good job but I was struggling in the background. I was drinking every day in that first couple of years. I was taking risks in my personal life that I normally would never take. I saw a few different counselors during that time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be honest with them about what I was going through because I thought I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I thought I shouldn’t be feeling this upset, and I needed to be stronger. Or worse, that I should be feeling more guilt.

It wasn’t until four and a half years after the incident when, one night, I had a knock on my door. It was someone giving me a subpoena to appear in court. As the safety manager for the site, I looked after records and documentation, so I was a key witness for the court case against the employer. I hadn’t even gotten over the initial trauma of the incident, and here I was having to relive it in vivid detail. After being in the witness box for more than five hours, I was mentally, emotionally and physically drained. It was after the trial that

I finally realized I needed help, and I needed to be honest with the counselor and with myself. I finally admitted how guilty I felt. The guilt was that I didn’t fight hard enough when crews weren’t following safe work practices. That I didn’t stand my ground more. That I didn’t do enough. I felt that I was responsible for that man losing his life and the ripple effect of that event reaching out to far too many people.

When I finally opened up about these feelings and worked through them it felt like the weight of the world lifted off of my shoulders. Did my flashbacks, nightmares and anxiety stop? I wish I could say yes. I can’t. I can say they are happening less and less as life moves along. But, it still manifests itself at strange times, or when I least expect them. As a safety professional, I still get challenged by workplace managers and workers about how safety is too hard, it slows us down, it costs too much. I don’t always win, but my argument is always, the alternative is much harder, will slow you down more, and the cost…there is no number, there is only trauma.