ET&D Partnership Releases 2024 Injury Data Report

52 TIMES THE TRADE BLED IN 2024 — AND WHAT THE DATA IS REALLY TELLING US

We’ve got a habit in this industry of treating “data” like it’s holy scripture — TCIR, LTIR, DART, color-coded charts that let executives pretend the house isn’t on fire. But buried under all that corporate confetti are the only numbers that matter: how many people didn’t go home the same, or didn’t go home at all.

And this is exactly why I stay loud, raw, and unapologetic about the ET&D Best Practices and the organizations inside this Partnership — because they’re the ones handing over real numbers, real SIF data, real fatality breakdowns, real patterns of what’s actually killing and maiming our people. They open their books. They show the ugly parts. They let their failures become fuel for the entire industry to get better.

That is rare.

That is brave.

That is necessary.

But don’t get it twisted — the gap is massive. Thousands of independent contractors, storm chasers, two-truck outfits, and regional utilities aren’t in this Partnership. We don’t get their numbers. We don’t see their SIFs, their near-misses, their midnight phone calls, or their quiet funerals. So when I beat the drum about Best Practices loud enough to piss off half of LinkedIn, it’s because I know the rules only work when the whole damn trade plays by them.

Right now?

Too many people are still working in the dark while the rest of us try like hell to drag the truth into the light.

This isn’t just a report.

It’s a reckoning.

Stop Lying to Ourselves With Averages

We love to pat ourselves on the back with “Our TCIR is down” or “Our DART rate looks good,” like that means anything to the family staring at an empty kitchen chair.

Meanwhile, in the real world, 52 people in this Partnership had a day in 2024 that changed their life forever.

That’s what this report is actually about:

Not metrics.Not graphs.Not dashboards.

Fifty-two times flesh and bone took the hit so paperwork could be updated after the fact.

If you work in this trade, you owe it to yourself — and to every person wearing your company logo — to understand what this report is screaming.

Four Funerals. Thirty Broken Bodies. Start There.

Let’s not bury the lede.

In 2024, across the ET&D Partnership:

52 SIF events
4 fatalities
30 fractured bones requiring surgery
7 serious burns (2nd & 3rd degree)
11 electrical events
13 falls from elevation
8 material handling events

Those 30 fractures? That’s 30 bodies they had to bolt back together — plates, screws, hardware, rehab, careers shortened, lives permanently altered.

And those 4 fatalities?Each one was a phone call that detonated somebody’s world.

Don’t sanitize it.Don’t soften it.Don’t spreadsheet it.

These Weren’t Freak Accidents — They Hit Us Right Where We Work

This is the part nobody likes to say out loud:We bled in the places we work every single day.

Fractures (30):

11 Struck By
10 Falls From Elevation

Electrical (11):

7 contacts
4 arc flashes
2 fatalities

Falls (13):

3 bucket access/egress
3 poles
2 aerial lift during crane tip-over

Material Handling (8):

3 poles
2 wire reels

And here’s the quiet killer in the footnotes:23% of all SIF events involved pole handling.

Almost one-quarter of the worst days we had involved moving, setting, bumping, or rigging a pole.

That’s not exotic hazard.That’s Tuesday morning.

Apprentice Injuries Are Down. Lineman and Supervisor Injuries Are Up. A Lot.

This is the statistic that should make every old hand stop mid-stride.

Apprentices:

2023: 12
2024: 2↓ 83%

That looks great.Some VP is already polishing it into a bullet point for a keynote.

But then you look deeper:

Lineman SIF events:

2023: 17
2024: 33↑ Almost double

Supervision SIF events:

2023: 2
2024: 9↑ 350%

Let me translate this into plain language:

The people who know better are getting hurt more.

This isn’t rookies messing up.This is the middle of the experience curve taking the hits.

If you’re a foreman, GF, or superintendent reading this — I’m talking directly to you:The buffer between hazard and apprentice is now getting chewed up alongside them.

Or instead of them.

Best Practices Exist. We Still Buried People.

Out of 52 SIF events, 14 had clearly applicable Best Practices:

Job Briefings: 5
Cradle-to-Cradle Gloves & Sleeves: 3
Admin Controls & Information Transfer: 2
I&I — Live Line Tool Method: 2
Safety at Heights: 1
I&I — Rubber Glove Method: 1

Two of the four fatalities had a Best Practice directly tied to them — Lock-to-Lock and Job Briefings.

We had the language.We had the tools.We had the expectations.

We still lost people.

That means one of two things (probably both):

We’re not executing Best Practices.
We’re checking boxes instead of changing behaviors.

Best Practices aren’t meant to decorate the breakroom bulletin board.They’re meant to keep people alive.

Pole Handling, Buckets, and Supervisors in the Blast Radius

If you want to know where to start fixing this tomorrow morning, the report hands it to you:

Pole handling — 23% of all SIFs
Bucket truck access/egress — repeated driver
Supervisors struck by, caught between, or arc flashed — 9 events

If you can work a decade in this trade and not think of a sketchy moment around any of those, you’re lying.

We don’t need a rebrand.We need discipline.

Real I&I.Real Cradle-to-Cradle.Real Job Briefings that call out high energy tasks.Real Safety at Heights.

Not slogans. Not posters. Not “initiatives.”

Execution.

What This Report Actually Proves

We’re not done.52 SIF events and 4 funerals is not a victory lap.
The hurt shifted.Apprentices down. Linemen and supervision up. Experience ≠ immunity.
Fractures and burns dominate.These are life-editing injuries, not “recordables.”
Best Practices matter — but they’re not being lived.Words aren’t saving people. Behaviors are.
Leadership is in the line of fire now.The canary isn’t singing. It’s screaming.

So What Do We Do With It?

If all we do is update a slide deck, put on a polo shirt, and talk about it at the next “Safety Summit,” then we’ve learned nothing.

Here’s what needs to happen:

1. Aim training where we’re bleeding.

Pole handling.Bucket access/egress.Electrical contact prevention.Material handling.

2. Make Job Briefings uncomfortable again.

If nobody admits a fear, confusion, or question — it wasn’t a briefing.

3. Enforce Best Practices like lives depend on them.

Because they do.

4. Put leadership back where the energy lives.

Supervision is in the blast radius now. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a warning.

The Bottom Line

These 52 SIF events are not numbers. They’re people.Names. Faces. Families. Scars.

We owe it to them — and to the ones who will pick up the tools tomorrow — to quit chasing pretty lagging indicators and start living the Best Practices we already signed our names to.

Because at the end of the day, it’s brutally simple:

Either we use this data to change how we work —or we keep using our people as the feedback loop.

And I’ll tell you right now:

That’s some straight-up Lineman Bull$hit.

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