August 7, 2009:NWLP
8/4/09
10:20 AM
Page 12
Union linemen
Hazardous work motivates commitment to Burn Center
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Journeyman electric lineman Jim
Penfold grabbed the wrong wire July
20, 1998. Then 55, Penfold had a 10-
year history working on Portland
General Electric power lines for con-
tractor Henkels & McCoy. But his ca-
reer ended on a high-voltage line near
LaGrande.
He remembers a loud explosion,
and a flash “like a nuclear blast.” In an
instant, his clothes caught fire, and he
found himself hanging upside down
until fellow union linemen, utilizing
their safety training, brought him
down from the 20-foot pole. Local
paramedics took him to Grande
Ronde Hospital, which Life Flighted
him to the Oregon Burn Center at
Legacy Emanuel Hospital.
Today, Penfold is a living example
of the Oregon Burn Center’s impor-
tance to members of the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
(IBEW). The only facility of its kind
between Sacramento and Seattle, the
Oregon Burn Center treats patients
with all kinds of burns. Besides doc-
tors and nurses who specialize in burn
treatment, it has special beds to reduce
pressure on the body, hydrotherapy ta-
bles used to safely bathe burn patients,
and a lift, hoist and rail system that al-
lows patients to be safely moved and
repositioned.
Of the 300-plus cases Burn Center
doctors see each year, electrical burns
can be some of the worst, said Kirsten
Balding, the Center’s long-time edu-
cation and outreach director. While a
residential wire carrying 220 volts can
deliver a nasty shock, a high voltage
contact is another creature altogether.
“Skin provides a huge amount of
resistance,” Balding said. In electrical
terms, resistance means the skin heats
up, rapidly. “Usually we see a sub-
stantial amount of damage at the first
contact site, or entry point.”
Hidden tissue damage is what
makes electrical burns different from
other kinds of burns. After contact,
electric current travels along bone or
tendons and can damage internal or-
gans, as well as the eardrum and the
cornea. A patient with burns on 2 to 3
percent of the skin surface can have
IBEW Local 125 Treasurer Doug Shaffer contemplates a plaque to apprentice
lineman Brent Lee Larwick in the Oregon Burn Center healing garden. The
plaque reads, “Live life to the fullest,” a favorite saying of Larwick’s. Larwick
was fatally electrocuted in Bremerton, Washington in April 2007.
burn damage on 50 percent of inside
tissues, Balding said.
Penfold said the thing he remem-
bers most was the heat. Contact with a
13,000 volt line — the kind of power
line outside most homes — can pro-
duce temperatures of 8,000 degrees
Fahrenheit in half a second. Skin
burns. Blood turns to steam.
“He’s lucky to be alive,” says Pen-
fold’s partner Caroline.
When he arrived at the Burn Cen-
ter, Penfold was comatose, connected
to four IV drips, and full of morphine.
Doctors determined that his injuries
would require amputation — his right
leg below the knee, and his right arm.
It was four months before he regained
consciousness. Then came six weeks
of rehabilitation. Finally, he was re-
leased to his home in Salem.
Now Penfold faced a new chal-
lenge: What to do with his time. Bore-
dom set in. When he was asked on a
visit to the Burn Center if he’d be in-
terested in volunteering, he leapt into
it. He soon became one of the center’s
most active volunteers — helping
other patients overcome demoraliza-
tion, and educating fellow linemen
Zachary
Zabinsky
• Social Security
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about the importance of safety.
One of the things that distinguishes
the Oregon Burn Center from others of
its kind is a strong emphasis on public
education and prevention. The center
employs a full-time education special-
ist who travels around the region giv-
ing talks to occupational and other
groups that are at the highest risk.
Doug Shaffer, treasurer of Port-
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cal 125 are honored with a plaque that
dedicates the center’s intensive care
wing to Blaine Degerness, a PGE
lineman and burn survivor.
But the crown jewel of the line-
men’s commitment to the Burn Center
is its healing garden.
The plot was a concrete wasteland
until Shaffer asked Burn Center lead
surgeon Nathan Kemalyan what more
they needed. “A garden,” was the an-
swer. PGE and employees raised
$200,000, recruited volunteer labor
and built a garden that won a 2008
Landscape Architecture Magazine
award.
Open only to patients of the center,
the Healing Garden provides sensory
experience and a lift to patients’ spirits
– and an alternative to the more clini-
cal environment inside. There are
flowers, sage, blueberries and straw-
berries. Patients can be wheeled out in
their beds to breath fresh air and take
their physical therapy outside. One
corner of the garden is intended for
children. There, a plaque with the
motto, “Live Life to the Fullest” sits
in memory of IBEW Local 125 mem-
ber Brent Lee Larwick, an apprentice
lineman who was fatally electrocuted
April 2007 in Bremerton, Washington.
“If something happens to one of
our guys up on a pole,” Shaffer said,
“this is where they come. Our goal is
to make sure members have a state-of-
the-art facility to come to, so they can
get the best treatment available.”
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Since 1983
land-based IBEW Local 125, thinks
the Burn Center’s program for electric
linemen has been a tremendous suc-
cess. Before the outreach program be-
gan in 2000, the center treated about
five linemen a year. Since then, Bald-
ing says, that’s dropped to about one a
year.
“That’s an ugly beast,” Shaffer
said, pointing to a nearby power line,
“and it can reach out and grab you and
take your life. Our goal is to go to
work in the morning and come home
at night, and if you can’t do that, this
is where you come to get put back to-
gether.”
That, Shaffer said, is the reason for
Local 125’s commitment to the Burn
Center. The Burn Center is the benefi-
ciary of almost all the local’s charita-
ble efforts.
The union’s annual benefit golf
classic has raised close to $750,000
over 13 years. An annual softball tour-
nament in Bend has brought in over
$75,000, while the annual Pacific
Northwest Linemans Rodeo netted
another $25,000 in 2007 and 2008.
The Burn Center is a featured agency
for PGE’s Employee Giving Cam-
paign; PGE matches employee contri-
butions 50 percent. And Shaffer and
fellow Local 125 member Bill
Quimby, a line foreman at Pacificorp,
serve on the board of trustees of the
Emanuel Foundation, along with Pen-
fold. In recognition of their record of
charitable giving, PGE and IBEW Lo-
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AUGUST 7, 2009