Oct 5, 2011

American TV: jumped from the roof of the house

I had a number of different experiences as a Television Repairman.  Some of then fairly normal while some of them not fairly normal. There were many potential ones as well that I only worried might happen since I often would have to carry large TV sets from a home to the van and later back into the home. (Those were the sets that required repair in the shop.) 

This particular time though had to do with the more dangerous part of the job since an antenna repairs always required myself to be either on a roof or in an attic where several different dangers were always present. This time I was repairing an antenna with the help of another technician. We had both climbed up onto the roof and he had gone first. It was in the early winter and there was some snow on the roof which didn’t seem to present to bad of a problem as he was able to fairly easily retain his footing. That is until I was on the roof below him. I had just taken a couple of steps up when he started a rather quick decent down the roof and was headed straight for me.  I knew that if he hit me we would both land on the ground and I would most likely be on the bottom. Since I had no time to step onto the ladder I just simply turned and jumped as far out onto the lawn as I could so that I wouldn’t be under him when he landed. I don’t remember where he hit or how he landed since my mind was fully engrossed in my own decent. I do remember that it was luckily an older home and thus quite small so the roof to the ground distance was only a little over 9 feet or so.  Neither of us were hurt in the fall and we did return to the roof and make the repairs but as I remember we also tied ropes over the roof to us so that we had something to steady us as we climbed and worked.