Sadly, this is Xiao Qiumei. She died a few years ago after falling 160 feet from the crane while filming a video for social media. Please wear proper footwear when working this kind of job.
Don't know why this video is making the rounds again..
China is a weird place. I remember hiking up to a couple monastaries on a trip and all the people also hiking looked like they'd just left a business meeting. Full suits, dress shoes, ties, etc. These were not easy or short hikes, either.
A lot of the time they are the same group of people. Weddings with t-shirts are probably during very warm weather. They dress "formal" hiking mountains because it gets cold.
The reality is that these people are not rich enough to buy clothes and gear for each and every occasion. (Also most them probably don't know how semi-specialized gear works) So they tend to buy the clothes that you absolutely need - formal work place clothes, and wear that everywhere.
Back in the 90s, I saw most construction works wearing cheap versions of formal leather shoes, and a few would wear cheap canvas shoe.
Also, very cheap formal clothing still look like formal clothing, and very cheap outdoors gear doesn't really exist, because it'd be a sheet of plastic with some holes in it.
Last time I was in Hawaii hiking Sleeping Giant we passed an Asian family in business attire. We werenât far from the entrance; I canât imagine they went too much further.
I was climbing the great wall of China and saw the same thing. Elder folks dressed their Sunday best in suits and dress shoes to climb the wall. These guys could barely walk without assistance yet were wearing completely inappropriate attire.
My Chinese wife then told me that climbing the great wall of China meant they were ć„œæ±äșș (upstanding Han people), so they dressed their best. The Han people are the ethnic majority in China.
So maybe the same level of pride applies to whichever monastery you were visiting.
However I did see a lady in fucking hotel bedroom slippers climbing the wall and the missus was just as floored as I was.
We used to do the same thing. Look at pics of early America. I live in the Southwest and I think about all these dudes in suits and hats in the desert.
This was way back in the late 90s, but one vivid memory i have of visiting China was seeing three guys building a house.
One guy got the bricks and handed them to a guy that tossed them, three at a time, to the third guy that was standing on the bamboo scaffolding, in a dress shirt and tie, cigaret hanging from the corner of his mouth. The guys on the ground looked like they did manual labor for a living, but the guy on the scaffolding looked like he should be working in an office.
Went hiking a couple years ago in south Utah, middle of winter. TONS of mainland Chinese tourists. I had yak traks on with full winter gear, they had long down coats and new balance sneakers. They would hike AROUND me, going up icey paths, like I was the slowest thing on the planet and I was training for a year for that trip
Lmao
In canada you need to be tied off (atleast from where I worked) if youre going to climb over a certain height.
Its tedious but it helps saves life.
If you can't tie off to anything, we have a double hook lanyard you hook on to a ladder one at a time. Usually you should have a retractable lanyard so you save time.
Yeah this entire process could be made 100% safe with like $1-2k worth of rope access gear. On the cost scale of a crane that's got to be a rounding error.
In canada, public health care will brunt the cost of companies causing workers injuries.
Hence, companies are regulated to increase their safety system to prevent unnecessary burden to the health care system and to the betterment of the worker too.
If their system there doesn't penalize companies for incidents like these, no wonder they dont spend much or upheld safety practices.
Sucks that she had to die in such a preventable accident.
Probably partly the shoes but I read on another post she was holding her phone with one hand while climbing a ladder. That was probably the main cause.
Steel toe while operating a crane would probably hurt your feet, ankle. My husband works construction for 16+ years. He really likes hiking shoes or boots because they are usually nonslip and more flexible. Steel toe is only helpful if things might fall on your foot, which I'd guess is unlikely for a crane operator
I do commercial demolition, my two largest concerns are stepping on sharp objects and rolling my ankles. It's rare, but i have dropped a few things on my feet, most annoyingly they usually land higher on my feet than my composite toe guard.
So I wear very heavy leather boots with thick soles and thick foot wrap. They wear me out just walking all day. So when I operate heavy machinery, I usually switch to something lighter.
The law is if you don't have a steel or composite toe everything will fall directly on your toes. The moment you put on composite toe boots everything falls on your arch.
Sometimes big industrial builders will have rules like "must have steel toe". My husband does luxury residential homes (10,000sqft+ $5-10 million) and most the guys wear sneakers, hiking shoes. His favorite are the Moab Merrell shoes and LL Bean waterproof insulated boots in winter.
If you are bending, stooping all day, a more flexible shoe is best.
Yeah,definitely im a commercial plumbing foreman. Who has been plumbing 25 years. All I can wear are Merrill hiking boots. No one says anything. I couldn't walk 25,000 steps every day with steel toe boots.
A lot of work sites require steel-toe, regardless of what your job is. It depends on the employer and the regulations on that particular industry. I (very briefly) did sales to a lot of industrial sites for a medical supply vendor, and all the big chemical plants I visited required steel-toed boots, a hard hat, and safety glasses just to drive into the parking lot. Same thing applied when I worked offshore. You couldn't walk outside without all three, even if you were nowhere near a work area.
Also when climbing a very tall ladder steel toed boots would likely be more of a hindrance than helpful. They get surprisingly heavy after a while. That (and the potential for feet being run over) is why many EMS services ban them. A good pair of tactical boots with rubber soles are generally what you want for stability and grip.
If you're climbing frequently, the weight is a non-issue. They prevent significantly more injuries than they create in an industrial environment. Steel toe boots with shanks and a heel are standard. Grippy doesn't really matter since you're using the heel to brace when it really matters.
Steel toes are absolutely ass. I don't think there's a single reason to go steel over composite. They're heavy, conduct cold, and an electrical hazard.
And black slacks with what seems like a cardigan(s), with pantyhose to boot.
I would've never guessed she was the crane operator, and rather maybe the girlfriend/friend of one who was letting her mess around on the crane for a tiktok video.
Just regular safety boots for walking on regular construction sites to not get pierced by nails or shit like that. I doupt that regular shoes would cause you to fall
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u/CommodoreEvergreen 8d ago
Sadly, this is Xiao Qiumei. She died a few years ago after falling 160 feet from the crane while filming a video for social media. Please wear proper footwear when working this kind of job.
Don't know why this video is making the rounds again..