Cape Safety, Inc. - The New Guard: Danger Dogs Series, #9

By Richard Hughes

THE  NEW GUARD, Book #9 in the Danger Dogs series, follows our intrepid safety, health, and environmental consultants into more international and national problems that require their expertise.

 

In a unique genre of actual fiction, the consultants of Cape Safety, Inc. and their West Coast enterprise, Cliff Safety, Inc., chase headline incidents that may have made a single news cycle but were then quickly left behind for more breathtaking "Breaking News." THE NEW GUARD rekindles those events with details beyond the sound bite you possibly heard. You'll read unusual stories about:

• car carrier ship fires
• the dark day in Boston in 1780
• blue economies
• seed banks
• fast fashion frailties
• ship breaking with water
• rain forest destruction
• energy storing concrete
• sexual harassment solutions
• Amazon delivery driver training
• a fire on a New England island
• amazing plastic-eating fungi
• Fenway Park farming
• living seawalls
• armoring Manhattan
• skateboard failures
• Codfather matters, and much more.

Any trip with a Cape Cod-based CSI consultant will prove interesting, educational, and informative.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Waquoit Wordsmith Press
• Release date: Jan 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224143931

Richard Hughes

Richard Hughes closed his 24-seat safety training center on Cape Cod to become a retired student of modern worldwide shipping operations. He graduated from Massachusetts Maritime Academy with a B.S. in Marine Transportation then obtained a Masters Degree in Business from Lesley University. While at MMA, he sailed on the Bay State, the Lightning, and the Mobil Lube. His books include the Cape Safety, Inc. – Danger Dogs Series—a collection of 9 novels detailing the exciting lives of a top-notch bi-coastal safety consulting firm. His popular non-fiction Deep Sea Decisions is an expose of maritime tragedies. He and his wife, Lavinia M. Hughes, have co-authored Newtucket Island, Training Ship, and Cape Car Blues. He lives and writes in the seaside village of Waquoit, MA, with his wife.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Testing out the microphone, from behind a podium they'd be using for their monthly meeting, Mike practiced, I grew up in a log cabin I helped my father build before I was born.

What-da-ya think, guys? Too historical?

Ya, among other things. You're pinning my bullshit meter, said Sandra.

The meeting would be held in the lighthouse conference room of Cape Safety, Inc., a safety, health, and environmental consulting company in Woods Hole, on Cape Cod. The complex had grown enormously in reputation and size since its earliest days back in the 1970's.

The company began, informally, when Bob Guard, the original safety person and Gene Wing, the original industrial hygienist, had met, began working jobs together, and decided to make the arrangement into a real company.

Since then, Bob and Gene had long retired and the two new owners, Mike Rocco and Lars Frionor, had filled their respective shoes and roles. Recently, Sandra Byrneski, the nonpareil scientist among them had been elevated to CEO. Now the company was populated with an impressive staff of well qualified specialists, and the firm had even expanded their footprint with a second headquarters in the famous San Francisco Cliff House with its own independent west coast identity as Cliff Safety, Inc.

Monthly, the two owners still brought everyone together for an evening meeting, great food, and often a guest speaker. This month they had invited the writer and employment attorney Brent Benrud to discuss the seven key reasonable accommodations disabled workers were due under the frequently misunderstood Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

American employers had a legal and moral obligation to provide reasonable accommodations for employees with differences, ensuring that they can fully participate in the workforce and contribute their skills and talents.

The act required that employers must engage with the employee in an interactive process in an effort to find an accommodation that will allow the employee to continue their employment.

It is often a challenge, but just the type of inclusivity challenge welcomed by the consultants at both coastal headquarters.

Sue Mei, attorney-consultant at Cliff Safety was on the Asperger's Spectrum herself, and Jeremy at Cape Safety in Woods Hole was born with only four fingers on one hand. Accommodations were routinely made and both consultants were amazingly productive workers. That was the kind of spirit all were anticipating Attorney Benrud would be speaking about tonight.

But it was still early in the day, and every day at Cape Safety, Inc. was filled by incoming action-items through the sophisticated Communication Centers, such as messages from throughout the world, and updates from clients, associates, governmental & academic contacts. Plus, today would include all other consultants returning to headquarters, literally, by planes, trains and automobiles.

Mike was piloting his own Seaglider, flying ten to twelve feet above the ocean's surface to get back in time.

Sue had taken BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit, light rail transit system serving the San Francisco Bay Area in California (BART) to a 9-mile spur line running to Antioch, as well as a 3-mile automated guide way transit line to reach Oakland International Airport for her flight to Cape Cod Gateway Airport in Barnstable.

A variety of ECars and AI taxis would insure the remainder of the invited guests would make it to the church on time if they weren't at headquarters already.

East Sweepster, the automated all-purpose robot who was also being programmed all things S, H, and E, was already scooting between the meeting room and the preparation kitchen arranging the main table and guest tables with tableware while quietly playing a Chris Botti, smooth jazz love classic from speakers recently relocated to his head area. Originally, Sam and Megan had placed the speakers for East and West Sweepster toward the robot's rears but the other consultants found conversing with Sweeps, there, to be disconcerting so the communications specialists relocated the speakers and receivers to the robot's heads.

Where God intended them to be, Lars had said at the time.

East Sweepster had also processed an article recently about New York & Philadelphia's popular Halal Food Carts[6] and had prepared a comparable pre-meal snack cart of Mediterranean goodies for the return of the firm's conquering heroes.

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Halal Cart.jpg

It was around 10 a.m. when the Comm. Center began to buzz with inquiries from Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar.

He was reporting that a cable car ferrying six children and two adults to a school was stranded hundreds of feet above a canyon in a remote part of Pakistan when one of the wire support cables snapped.

The eight people had been crossing the river canyon in the Battagram District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province when the cable partially failed.

Snake had the most familiarity with rope and height rescues and immediately began to cross conference with Tipu Sultan, a retired Pakistan Army brigadier general and defense expert, already on-scene, who was informing Snake that helicopter pilots would risk swaying the bucket with the force of their high-velocity rotors.

Snake promised to inform the Prime Minister of that concern, but continued to advise on available commandos who could lower themselves on ropes from more distant helicopters above the danger of causing wind wash.

Although the group of eight passengers spent 6 hours in terror before a consensus on a rescue strategy was reached, and once the commandos went into action all were rescued within an hour.

Snake said he'd be sending some backup material on how to inspect such private chairlifts and their support systems for safety and the Prime Minister assured him that a team would be put onto that mission immediately.

In 2017, 10 people had been killed when a similar cable car fell into a ravine hundreds of meters deep into the mountain of Murree, when a comparable cable broke. Obviously, whatever inspection criteria they had put in place after that disaster failed to prevent this close call and Snake's tougher criteria would be welcome.

About the same time a less distracted Cliff Safety, Inc. Communications Center in San Francisco let Woods Hole know that the President in Washington had just given final Department of Interior greenlighting to Revolution Wind, a 704-megawatt turbine array planned for 15 miles southeast of Point Judith, Rhode Island. The array will be capable of powering nearly 250,000 homes and is expected to create an estimated 1,200 construction jobs.

The joint venture by developers Ørsted and Eversource was the fourth offshore wind project to be approved by the Biden Administration, adding to the:

Vineyard Wind site in Massachusetts that Cape Safety was already knee deep in assisting,

South Fork Wind project, also in Rhode Island and New York waters, and

Ocean Wind 1 project off of New Jersey.

The Biden Administration expected to have 16 such project plans reviewed by 2025. Telling, was that only the prior weekend, adjacent Block Island had lost both water and power for a short time when a catastrophic fire broke out at the historic Harborside Inn, leaving it a total loss but, thankfully, causing no injuries.

Special firefighting ladder truck equipment needed to be ferried over from the Rhode Island mainland to help knock down the blaze, an extremely unusual circumstance.

The building would need to be demolished.

But when completed, an underwater cable link to this new energy source would resolve the issue of insufficient electrical energy to Block Island and the massive power loss would be unlikely to arise ever again.

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Rhode Island

Anything that could help mitigate the immediate and long term effects of climate change was welcomed. Cliff Safety had also reported to them, just yesterday, that amid record ice melting in the Antarctic last year no emperor penguins chicks survived from over four colonies. It was something Cape and Cliff had been monitoring and the news was a disappointment.

Over 90% of the penguin colonies were facing collapse by the end of the century.

There were no Happy Feet at either of the CSI environmental consulting headquarters buildings over that news.

By the dinner hour, East Sweepster had logged 2.7 miles (yes, he had a log) rolling between the prep. kitchen, the catering truck backed into the Cape Safety, Inc. loading dock, and the lighthouse meeting room—accumulated while setting up the room and laying out a monstrous banquet buffet of food for 15 or 20 attendees.

Prior meetings had food appropriate to the keynote topic such as Mexican food when border safety for immigrant families was discussed; Mediterranean food when they all learned about the orcas seeming to attack small boats off the Strait of Gibraltar and the Iberian Peninsula off Portugal, Spain, & Morocco; and Korean Food when they had a speaker discussing tuna and other overfishing and captive crew concerns.

So the gang had begun to check the menus to guess what the subject matter of the guest speaker might be for the evening.

The All-American barbeque theme of steak, burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, corn-on-the-cob, and a hot chocolate fountain for ice cream sundae desserts belied that a domestic topic was ahead, but time would confirm that.

After new CEO Sandra Byrneski, who had long served as the firm's head scientist and industrial hygienist, opened the meeting with company owners Mike and Lars making short introductory presentations, the keynote speaker, Attorney Brent Benrud gave the assemblage a terrific update on, The Seven Accommodations Disabled Workers are Due in the USA, an important topic for all of them who worked with clients integrating special needs workers into their various workplaces daily.

It was a critical topic to the several Cape and Cliff consultants now working with Ukraine also.

Ukraine was struggling to get productive once more and so many of their people had been injured and emotionally scarred by Russian and mercenary aggression it was obvious that the next generation of the country would need to grow with many of their population at less than what would be described as full capability.

In fact, they would likely be redefining that phrase to mean something uniquely contributory in spite of a significant deficiency.

As a strong and proud country they were people well prepared for the challenge.

If Ukraine were to follow the American model, these were the key points Brent offered that night:

  INTERACTIVE PROCESS

Between the employer and the employee a reasonable accommodation must be acknowledged by both sides. The employers’ and the employees’ needs, which also meet the goals of the organization, must be agreed upon. It'll be a balancing act and it is unlikely that the quantity of productivity will equal that of a fully enabled person. Yet the quality of accomplishment will invariably please everyone.

  FLEXIBLE WORK ARRANGEMENTS

These could include adjusting work hours around necessary medical and therapeutic appointments for the employee or allowing telecommuting or other electronic job adjustment options. The 2020 Covid pandemic made apparent that flexible work arrangements can work and often work better without the distractions of commuting to and from a jobsite daily.

  PHYSICAL ACCESSIBILITY

The Americans with Disabilities Act enacted during the George Bush Administration in America, not a particularly labor-sympathetic era, proved that the feared high financial cost of physical accommodations was overblown, primarily a business fear tactic to prevent the law—fare more than a reality.

In truth, many businesses did better when their customers—also in need of such accommodations—now had true access to all of their facility. Physical accessibility can include ramps, elevators, wider doorways, and accessible bathroom facilities, specifications that most American building codes have mandated for decades now. Many firms have even worked out valet and friendlier workplace entrance arrangements to reduce the need for designated handicapped parking spaces.

  ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGIES

Employers must consider available adaptive technologies to assist employees at performing their jobs effectively. Presently these technologies include screen readers, voice recognition typing software, adaptive keyboards, and myriad other modest adaptations being developed across the world daily. Managements of CSI's clients were encouraged to keep abreast of these developing technologies via contact with local social service and academic institutes. CSI had already established many of these and readily communicated new adaptability findings to their worldwide clients whenever they were identified.

  JOB RESTRUCTURING AND DESIGN

Many surprisingly simple modifications to job tasks can be made to better suit the abilities of any employee with different abilities. Job restructuring or redesigning usually doesn't require more than employer/employee cooperation, but when that isn't enough, companies like CSI have long stepped in with expertise to make it happen.  Brent was adamant that job redesign oftentimes brought existing ergonomic deficiencies of the job to light, making two-fold improvements once the job was closely studied.

  TEMPORARY ACCOMMODATIONS

When an employee has a temporary disability, employers must consider providing temporary accommodations to help them through their recovery process. Things like a temporary wider aisle way to accommodate a wheelchair or enlisting a fellow employee to help a worker on crutches get up a stairway with a pocketbook, briefcase or some such. This could include temporarily reassigning tasks the employee can't perform for this temporary period or providing modified equipment during their healing period.

  MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT

Reasonable accommodations must also extend to employees with mental health issues. Post traumatic stress attacks after an event can be dealt with by employers with compassion and understanding. Medications aid millions of people to cope with mental strains and with medical guidance should not be disparaged or restricted by an employee striving for equilibrium. Good employee health plans should obviously include mental health care but the speaker and CSI consultants all fully realized that 30 million Americans still lacked health insurance.

Considering the great contribution exceptional employees offer American productivity, every effort continues to be needed to incorporate these people into the mainstream of workplace life.

America is a country with a good head start on many other countries in this regard with many lessons to teach others.

Brent encouraged CSI to continue to lead the way in the years ahead.

Tickets, the Cape Safety Dalmatian, seagull defender, shameless doggie treats beggar, and arch enemy of Oarlocks the firm's cat, enjoyed the meeting more than the consultants,  managing to scrounge three hot dogs, a cheeseburger, and at least two steaks while making his rounds beneath the assembled tables.

East Sweepster, the always-in-motion-robot harbored and evidenced no similar gastronomically larcenous intentions.

All in all, an average day at Cape Safety, Inc.

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Typical Infraction.jpg

CHAPTER 2

Early the next day, before Jeremy’s and William's cheese dogs, corn on the cob, and the rest of the banquet had even digested, both were walking through a Rhode Island manufacturing plant performing a mock-OSHA inspection.

Lots of folks assumed that by the middle of 2023, routine safety infractions had long been permanently addressed and that such problems now existed only in China, the Philippines, or less advanced business cultures.

That perception could not have been more wrong.

American business owners continued to allow unsafe workplace conditions and unsafe work practices to go unresolved and American workers continued to be injured by easily preventable hazards.

The unusual or previously unrecognized hazards (like flesh-eating bacteria or forever chemistry) were always the hazards that made breathless headlines, but unattended everyday exposures were typically the common injury producers.

As the two consultants conducted their voluntary OSHA-style walk through this morning, yes at management’s request, typical exposures were noted and logged onto their note taking tablets.

Some serious hazards, like a purposely blocked fire door, the consultants asked to be addressed immediately.

Other violations needed a bit of time, some equipment, or a capital expense to address.

Cartoon collage of workplace injuries as JPG.jpg

But too often the consultants were identifying a contributing cause of workers simply failing to perceive and act preventively in the presence of an obvious hazard. Using a table saw without the readily available blade guard in position; using compressed air to clear away dust without eye protection being worn by the worker and others in the area; improper fork