Your civic duty

Welcome to the 47th edition of Safe For Work. No frills today. Science fiction from Matt Cantor and a new SFW Film.

Next week we’ll release the safety news monitor and AI Safety Agent so you can easily see the latest safety news and have your own intelligent consultant to research and discuss workplace safety, and analyze OSHA data.

After a devastating hurricane spares her power plant but decimates her town, a scrupulous safety inspector wrestles with a life-altering decision: preserve her professional achievements or protect her community's future.

The Last Inspection

Matt Cantor

Chief Safety Inspector Clare Estrella was not in the plant when the hurricane hit. She was at home, in the basement, with her husband Dylan, and her three daughters, Laura, Mira, and Calliope. The basement was thick-- concrete set, plenty of food and water and batteries, just in case. The perfect safe place to ride out the storm.

She wasn’t worried about the plant. The facility was well-insulated against wind and rain-- she’d made sure of it. Thick walls, strong foundations. Waterproofing where it mattered. Backups for the backups when it came to wiring, and plenty of first-aid stations for the people who were working that night, if something happened-- but of course, nothing happened.

The windows were all reinforced glass, per her specifications. Sure enough, plenty of tree-branches broke loose and came hurtling through the air at seventy-odd miles per hour, smashing-- and bouncing away, with nothing more than a crack to show for it. When the power-lines outside came down-- and of course they came down-- the plant automatically shut down generation while repair-crews went out to fix the lines. Nobody getting electrocuted on Clare’s watch.

All in all, it was a very successful storm.

When she and her family come out of their basement into the aboveground rubble of their home the next morning, the Humsberg Municipal Coal Solutions plant is fully intact and back to business. One, two, three, four smokestacks gently pouring one, two, three, four grey rivers into the sunrise. All the power-lines have been fixed, for the few homes that are still standing. Clare walks a few once-were blocks down the road to the underground parking-garage where she’d left her pickup instead of the driveway. It’s an easy walk-- no traffic; the roads are clogged with sideways and upside-down minivans and hatchbacks, already starting to rust. Already, there are trucks out and about, carefully clearing everything.

When she reaches the parking-garage, she walks down three of the five floors into the Earth; the bottom two are flooded, as she’d expected them to be; that’s why she’d only parked on B3. Her white pickup is as shiny and ready-to-go as ever and always.

Today is a longer drive to work than usual; more than just the wreckage of cars and houses to cautiously maneuver around, two of the bridges are out; smashed to steel splinters in the storm. She’ll have to go the long, long way around. She calls Dylan-- hands-free, of course, safety first, of course, she is the Chief Safety Inspector, after all-- she tries to call Dylan to keep her company, but he’s busy on the phone already with the insurance-company, and it’s not going well; or at least no better than it went last time. He’s cursing at the man on the other end of the line quite loudly, and he’s not feeling good about it; it’s not that man’s fault, or even his boss’s fault, for all the other things that really are his boss’s fault. How is a small local insurance-company supposed to pay out for a townful of homes that get destroyed and rebuilt once a year? That’s just not how the business model of insurance works.

When Clare finally gets through to him, she’s nearly made it the rest of the way to work anyhow, but it’s still nice to hear his voice for a few minutes-- hoarse as it is. “They’ll cover half,” he says, “but I bet I can get the rest. If things are bad for them now, just imagine the class-action, right?”

“Let’s build fully underground next year, yeah?”

Clare has really fallen in love over her lifetime with the idea of windows-- morning sun, evening rain. But all underground means more room for a garden, doesn’t it? And it’s much easier to replant a garden than to rebuild a house. She’s learned that now.

“School today for the kids?”

Dylan laughs in a way that he doesn’t really mean to-- “What do you think?”

Virtual classes could pick up, probably-- should, probably-- state tests are coming up. They’re going to have to find some substitutes. Dylan supposes that the vigil for Mr. Yull in the fifth grade is going to be either tomorrow or the day after-- people have gotten good at planning these things quick-- and Mrs. Herth’s husband in the fourth grade will be at some point next week-- he’ll have a lot of family coming in to pay respects, from all over the country, probably.

“Mira lost two classmates this time around,” says Dylan. “I think. Two, or maybe three. They still haven’t heard from Amanda or her family. The recovery-crews are working hard-- we’ll probably know by this afternoon.”

“How is she taking it?” asks Clare, but she doesn’t really give Dylan time to answer-- she’s finally arrived at the plant. “We’ll talk about it later,” she tells him. “I love you,” she tells him, and then she hangs up. She taps her badge and does a quick round of the plant.

Sure enough, sure enough, everything is perfect-- or near enough, sure enough. That cracked window will be replaced by the afternoon-- she checks all the boxes on the approval. Smokestack 3 got hit with a bit of debris as well, it looks like, but no serious damage. A bit of masonry to do-- not a problem. Everything on the inside of the plant, all the main buildings, is ship-shape; no flooding or rain damage. One of the maintenance-sheds near the edge of the parking lot got wiped away, but that was going to be remodeled soon anyways.

All in all, Clare tells herself again, a very successful storm.

After she’s done with her inspection, she reports to her boss’s office-- the Plant Overseer. He’s a nice man. He’s a listening man-- she’s always liked working with him. She knows that whatever she has to say, it won’t just be tossed out. “How’s it looking?” he asks, as she walks in the door. “Any major problems? Anything broken?”

She tells him about the window and the shed. She tells him about the debris hitting the smokestack. She mentions that it might be a good idea to pay the town to help reinforce those bridges a bit better when they get rebuilt-- “More than a bit better, really,” she says with a shrug. “This year’s storm was worse than last year’s. Next year’s storm will be worse than this year’s. It might also be smart to have some more underground parking-lots built down in town for employees to keep their cars in. I was noticing a lot of people showing up very late to work today or not being able to make it in at all-- and you know how I see things.”

“I do,” nods the Plant Overseer. “‘Safety is About People’,” he says, just like she always says. “If people aren’t coming here, then they can’t help here be safer.”

“Exactly.”

“Anything else?”

“We need to shut down the entire plant,” says Clare, simple and plain.

The Overseer furrows his brow-- “But you said--”

“We need to shut down the plant,” says Clare again. “Safety comes first.”

“But you said that everything…”-- the Overseer trails off. “Oh!” he realizes. “Oh, you want to do a more thorough inspection-- shut down for a day, run all the systems through their paces just to make sure. I mean, it will be expensive, but--”

“No,” says Clare. “We have to shut down the entire plant. Permanently.”

“I don’t--”

“I’m telling you,” says Clare. “I am the Chief Safety Inspector, and I am telling you this; we need to shut down the plant and never start it up again.”

Outside the window of the office, the sun is continuing to rise. It is beautiful-- it is dazzling like a fresh snowfall across the miles of shattered glass, across the floodwaters in the lower-laying parts of town. It is painting the debris of the houses and shops and schools and hospital in gorgeous red-orange tones.

“We have to stop,” says Clare. “It’s not safe.”

SFW Films presents: Touchpoint

In a futuristic warehouse, a father on probation at his job takes part in an illegal, after-hours ritual that will prove whether he's truly capable of controlling the colossal machinery he operates—by using it to gently cradle his daughter.

Adapted from the short story in issue 37.

See you next week as we imagine what safety might look like if the Department of Government Efficiency eliminates OSHA.

Stay safe.