Wow, what a season it has been so far on the traveling side of the industry! It's about to get really busy and the days are about to get really long as county and state fairs start kicking off. All the easy weeks of shopping center lots and small-town festivals are over and it's “Go Time”. So that brings me to some thoughts for this month's safety corner message.

The temperatures are getting extremely hot, in some areas of the country, they have been extremely hot for some time now. With the higher temperatures also come the severe storms and weather events that wreak havoc on the equipment, the employees and the owners' stress levels. If you have employees out working in these extreme conditions, please remember to have them drink plenty of fluids. Drink water and lots of it. Just today I was doing some inspection work in New Jersey and oh boy was it a hot day. The midway was on black top and the shiny diamond plate decking just acted like a mirror for the sun's heat.

Heat exhaustion is a very serious thing, and we should all be mindful of the effects that heat has on our bodies. I felt like falling out and I wasn't carrying heavy ride parts or setting up today. So again, drink fluids and please pass this on to everyone that needs to hear it.

Storms with high winds can cause so much damage to the equipment, every year we see pictures on the internet of a funhouse or game trailer that got blown over in a windstorm. If you know there is a storm coming it might be a good idea to lower the marquees on the concession trailers and pull the stock trucks on the midway to help block the wind on the center games. Maybe take all the flags off the rides and games so that don't get bent or become flying projectiles. I know everyone should know this already, but I just want to put a friendly reminder out there to bring it to the front of your memory banks. Hopefully this will save some equipment from being damaged or some employees being hurt that are possibly hit with flying objects.

So how about the employees that are putting in some very long days outside? We covered the heat exposures but how about the fatigue potential to employees. I know it's what we do, work all day, teardown half the night, then catch a few hours' sleep and get up and get on down the road to the next spot. These guys and girls that help move the show or even drive their personal vehicles all need to be rested before getting on the highway. I know I'm preaching to the choir but sometimes we need a reminder.

I know from personal experience about having someone fall asleep and drive off the road and into a ditch, having ride parts scattered in a corn field, and I'm sure there are plenty of people reading this that have had similar incidents. If you want to get some sweet corn this summer, there are people selling it at farm stands all over the country. It's not a good idea to try and pick your own as you drive through the field. Let's do that for strawberries and blueberries and apples at the pick your own stands and keep the shiny side of the equipment down on the highway.

These are just a few things to get you thinking about weather conditions. I hope that you gained one piece of information from this short article on safety and can help make our industry safer and better every day.

I can be reached via email avery@worldwidesafetygroup.com or at 813-505-3938 for any questions or comments, please feel free to provide feedback to help me better communicate these safety related messages. If you have any suggestions for future articles, please feel free to reach out.

Remember “Our World Revolves Around Safety!”