Gate Safety

Sadly, another child has died because of a poorly maintained sliding gate. This one was in Tucson, Arizona, and it didn’t have to happen.

For too long, our industry has not taken these incidents to heart. Just how many does it take for us to realize that what we do can be a danger to children and adults when we don’t do our jobs properly?

There have been standards from Underwriters Laboratories from back in the 1990’s and maybe before then, advising us on how to properly install automated gates. The problem is too many of us have paid no attention to these standards and warnings, and accidents have happened. The real problem is that these most recent deaths have resulted from sliding manual gates. Yes, manual gates. Most of these deaths, and there have been many, have resulted because there was no fallover protection or positive stops on the gates to keep the gates from running out of their rolling hardware. A simple fix in almost all the fatality cases. We can do a better job.

Recently, at the Thornton Fence Consulting Group Fence Business Conference that was held in Monkey Island, Oklahoma, there was a meeting of over 80 fence installers, manufacturers, AFA executives, FWA executives, ASTM representatives, and other industry members. There was a good discussion about how we can disseminate the standards that are out there but, due to copywrite laws, cannot be freely passed out.

For years, there has been a coalition that has met and summarized the standards and has put them into a form used to teach installers around the country at AFA and other teaching functions. Those summarizations have been out there on the internet but, apparently, hard to find for some, unintentionally. That is no longer the case. The Thornton Fence Consulting Group has put together a comprehensive and easy-to-follow, 40-page book that explains the UL 325 and ASTM standards that pertain to the gate and automated gate industry. That book will soon be available to the public online at the Thornton Fence Consulting Group website, fenceconsultinggroup.com.

Friends, these tragedies resulting in families without their loved ones could have been avoided simply through plain common sense. We must do better. Care about what you are doing. Care about the customers you are serving. It’s not that difficult. Most problems can be solved with a little bit of hardware, or certainly a fall-over preventive post. This doesn’t take much to do. Be assertive. Show initiative.

One of the ideas that was tossed around at the Fence Business Conference meeting was for all of us to contact the schools in each of our areas to warn them that there are potential problems with some of the gates at their campuses. Older gates can be especially hazardous, but no one should overlook the new ones. We know there are problems out there. Tackle them. Make a name for yourself in your community and spread the word.

I encourage anyone who has not seen the video regarding this issue to visit this website: thehummingbirdalliance.com. Watch the video regarding the death of nine-year-old Alex Quanbeck from San Rafael, California. It’s a sad story but very enlightening. If you can watch that video, you will have a change of heart in how you look at gate installations in the future. Share the video with your employees and coworkers. Certainly, show it to your local school administrators. If they don’t do something, show it to the PTA/PTO groups. They will get something done, I’m sure of it!

Also, during the Fence Business Conference meeting, the group made a strong commitment to bring the industry to a new level of professionalism. We should all be striving to do that. Our good friends, Shawn King of Mr. Fence Academy, and Chris Gass, also with Mr. Fence Academy and owner of his own company, Jack Fences in Lafayette, Louisiana, introduced a rallying cry for this initiative: OFFENCE. Yes, I spelled that correctly. We need to be on the offensive, striving to better our industry and raise the level of professionalism in each person who is out there installing, selling, and servicing fencing.

We need to do something for our industry. We must do something, and it starts now.