DON’T LOSE SIGHT OF SAFETY


Armchair quarterbacking is the easy way to watch and criticize sports or for that matter, a realty television series.

The Chain Saw Ice Sculptors reality show produced by Silver Plume Productions and shown on TLC certainly highlighted our industry and had all the ingredients required to make an interesting program – glamor, well represented by Dominique Collel, the Ice Queen from Images in Ice, Camarillo, CA; some high performance carving by Houston,Texas-based Rolando De La Garza aka Reverend Butter, and his partner Buddy Rasmussen of the DLG Ice Factory, and some technically accurate sculpting by father and son team, Takeo and Shintaro Okomato of the Okamato Studio in New York City.

Great television and anyone I have spoken to agrees, it did our industry proud.

Overall, our art was shown in good light and many of the day-to-day challenges faced by business carvers were covered - tight deadlines, bad weather, hot temperatures, traffic problems, broken sculptures, forgotten tools – all those things that make our industry the fun and challenging business it is.

I understand this program is one of several being planned on our industry – Samantha Brown’s Great Weekend on Travel Channel was another. And there will likely be more.

Then I read Aaron Costic’s recent newsletter in which there was a story about a 73 year old man who was killed when an ice sculpture fell on him at a wedding. Admittedly, this all happened in India where the liability laws are quite a bit different to North America, but even so, real reality set in quickly ! I had enjoyed the reality show several days beforehand, but then I started to think. What if……..?

Reverend Butter is a showman and I watched him wielding his chain saw around and Dominique using her gas-powered chain saw, neither of them wearing eye protection. Now, I’ll be the first to admit goggles would not have added anything to Dominique’s evening gown outfit, but where do we go from here? How can we show our industry off for the exciting business it is and yet display due diligence and demonstrate we really do know what we are doing when it comes to safety ?

Carve ice at the Crystal Garden competition at Winterlude in Ottawa, Canada and you have to wear chaps to protect your legs. If you don’t, you don’t carve. Work on a tall sculpture and you will require a safety harness, as well.

Last summer, I watched a lumberjack show on television. I guess the show was somewhat similar to the ice show in many respects – high performance chainsaw work and so on, but the participants were all wearing appropriate safety gear. So I guess it can be done.

As a company, we are one of the larger players in the industry and as such have caught the eye of the Labor Board – equivalent of OSHA in the US. Eye protection and steel-toed boots are mandatory in our facility – and this includes visitors. Inspectors can walk in anytime and frankly, they have more power than the police. Get caught without safety gear and the company – and the offending employee ! – can expect a heavy fine.

I certainly don’t want to push the panic button but that fatality in India does focus attention on an industry in need of some attention when it comes to safety practices.

I admit I am not altogether innocent, either. It’s always the same attitude - accidents, won’t happen to me – right ? But I feel the time has come where we should start paying attention to safety rules or one day, we are going to get one big, nasty surprise.

I spoke to Aaron to get his input and we both feel that operating safely in the workplace and on-site would make an excellent topic at the next NICA Convention and Trade Show. And how can we smack the message home strongly enough so we are all operating as safely as possible ?

Self-policing will go a long way to setting safety standards for our industry. The last thing we want is to have the labor board or its equivalent looking over our shoulder day in and day out.

How do you feel about this idea ? Let us know.

We have heard other comments about the show which are worth noting. I was told one prominent special event planner saw the show and commented if he had known there was so much at stake to get ice to an event, he probably wouldn’t use it. The drama of on-time delivery and a broken sculpture was no doubt created especially for the show and the ensuing drama did add something for the viewing audience, but some in the industry reacted differently.

Don’t ever knock television exposure when you can get it at this level, but be wary of how the subject might be interpreted.