An engineer who died after a deadly electric shock from a faulty machine was left undiscovered by work mates for over an hour on a factory floor.
Andy Meade, 55, was rushed to Darent Valley Hospital after colleagues found him unresponsive in the warehouse in Gravesend. It was believed the ‘healthy’ father of four had suffered a sudden heart attack.
It wasn’t until a week after his death that distraught wife Paula, 55, was told that her husband had in fact died from a catastrophic electric shock.
Paula, from Walderslade in Kent, said: “I was told it was a heart attack, but he was a healthy man with no history of heart problems.
“It wasn’t until his colleagues watched the CCTV, and the police investigated fully, that they realised he had been electrocuted.
“It took a week for me to find out exactly how my husband had lost his life.”
The father of four was servicing a faulty electrical air compressor, which had not been serviced for over a decade, when he was electrocuted despite the machine being ‘switched off’ from all electrical current.
Now, Paula is calling for safety checks of similar machines to be tightened.
Currently, legislation calls for electrical checks to be carried out within a ‘reasonable’ timeframe, leaving the time scale, she says, open to interpretation.
Andy was completing the routine quarterly service for contracting firm Logistex in December 2017 at Kimberley Clark’s distribution centre, the company which owns Kleenex and Huggies.
The engineer of 30 years believed power had been cut to the machine. But, a fault meant a metal plate was permanently live at 240 volts, leaving him exposed to a deadly quantity of electricity. Paula said: “This was an accident waiting to happen.”
Shortly after Andy was found in a critical condition, Paula received a call saying he had suffered a suspected heart attack.
Paula said she was left fearing the worst as she listened to medical staff working to resuscitate her husband. She said: “I just heard them counting time and banging and calling his name. They came out and said it wasn’t looking good.
“Five minutes later, they came back and I knew what they were going tell me. It was Andy’s job to cover other staff who were off sick or away on holiday, which meant that service would normally have been someone else’s workload. That is hard to accept.”
It has since been revealed that, on top of not being tested since it was installed in 2006, the machine had been modified a number of times over 11 years.
It is believed these changes were not conducted to the correct standard or under the correct professional supervision.
In January 2019, a Maidstone coroner ruled Andy’s death an accident. The Health and Safety Executive are investigating.
Tracey Benson, Employers Liability Lawyer from Slater and Gordon, who is representing Paula and her family, said: “Logistex failed to have the compressor tested since its installation in 2006.
“There were also modifications to the compressor which were performed with no planning or professional oversight, resulting in the machine becoming a death trap for any worker that was due to service it.
“In my opinion, the will have breached a host of regulatory codes and, therefore, will have to answer some tough questions from the HSE, potentially resulting in a conviction.”
Paula was also distressed to discover there was no defibrillator on site, something she believes may have helped play a role in saving Andy’s life. Paula adds: “There should be a defibrillator in every place of work, but especially places where workers could be exposed to potentially fatal injuries.
“It could be a simple addition to a workplace that could save a life. “I also think all staff in roles like Andy’s should carry radios which automatically call for assistance when a person is lying down.
“When Andy was electrocuted, there was only one radio available for two engineers. He wasn’t wearing one and was left lying there for over an hour.”
Paula and Andy had been looking forward to their future together after their four children had grown up and left home. A future, Paula says, has now been robbed of them.
“We have been cheated of our life together. He was cheated and I have been cheated. My world stopped turning the day he died.
“We were like the other half of each other. I always came up with the ideas and he would do them. It was fun; we always had each other’s backs.
“Once our children had grown up, we had the time to rediscover who we were as a couple and we were looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together.”
The couple had purchased a campervan, which they used to travel the UK in the summer before Andy’s death, and they planned to take it across Europe in 2018.
Paula has now sold the campervan as she can’t bring herself to travel without her husband.
