When working at heights, fasten the safety buckle of life.

When working at heights, fasten the safety buckle of life.

General Secretary Xi Jinping once said: "To walk the path of life well, you must fasten the first button of life properly."

On May 4, 2014, by the shores of Weiming Lake, General Secretary Xi Jinping addressed young people at a symposium for faculty and students of Peking University: "The value orientation of youth determines the value orientation of the entire future society, and youth are at the stage of forming and establishing their values. It is crucial to guide the cultivation of values during this period. This is like buttoning a shirt: if the first button is fastened incorrectly, all the remaining buttons will be wrong. The buttons of life must be fastened correctly from the very beginning."

There are many buttons in life, but in daily life and work, the safety button is the most important one. Anyone who neglects safety issues will inevitably face dangerous situations.

For example, consider the story of "Two Hard Hats: One for the Leader, One for the Worker." In April 2019, a worker posted a video on a short-video platform. In the video, the worker held a hard hat in each hand—a red one for the leader and a yellow one for himself. He then knocked the two hats together. The yellow hard hat, like an egg striking a stone, shattered instantly, while the leader’s red hard hat had only a few fragments of the yellow one stuck to it, with no other damage whatsoever.

If even workers' safety helmets are not safe, how can workplace safety be achieved? Fulfilling the primary responsibility of enterprises for workplace safety must never be reduced to a mere formality or superficial gesture.

According to national standards, safety helmets must comply with the requirements of GB 2811-2007 Safety Helmets, and the selection of safety helmets must comply with the requirements of GB/T 30041-2013 Head Protection—Specification for Selection of Safety Helmets.

Safety applies everywhere, regardless of scale or occasion, from the individual to the entire world.

I. Recent Warning Cases of Falls from Height in 2025

1. The Huizhou Municipal Emergency Management Bureau published a letter on its official website titled "Letter on Supervising the Investigation and Handling of the '4·13' General Fall from Height Accident During the Sunroom Installation Project of a Self-Built House in Jiulongfeng, Huidong."

The official letter states that at around 14:00 on April 13, 2025, a fall-from-height accident occurred during the installation of a sunshade canopy at a self-built house by villagers of Xinlou Village Group, Jiulongfeng, Huidong County, resulting in one death.

2. According to the website of the Fujian Provincial Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, a fall-from-height accident occurred at the secondary renovation project of Building 1# and Building 2# of Fucuo-Yuanshan Shili in Fuzhou, resulting in one death, and the accident was reported 41 days late.

II. Learning from Others: Effective Prevention of High-Altitude Fall Accidents

At 18:03 on April 12, 2025, the government affairs account "Xiadu Xining" issued a notice on promoting and applying the "Xining City Fall Prevention Responsibility 'Awareness Card'" citywide. The "Awareness Card" applies to the following types:

1. High-altitude work projects: engineering involving work at heights such as scaffolding erection and dismantling, formwork support, suspended platform operations, and protection of edges and openings.

2. Special structure projects: projects with a building height exceeding 24 meters or with construction difficulties such as cantilevers, large spans, or irregular structures; densely occupied venues: construction sites of public buildings such as schools, hospitals, and shopping malls;

3. Other high-risk construction sites: various construction sites listed under key supervision at all levels or with potential fall hazards.

It goes without saying that the Xining Municipal Work Safety Committee has carried out its work with great thoroughness and effectiveness, placing it at the forefront of work safety management. The application of the “awareness card” will certainly play a positive role in “clarifying responsibilities, standardizing management, and preventing risks.” It can also help drive all responsible parties (construction units, executing units, and supervision units) as well as on-site workers to clearly understand the requirements of their duties for preventing falls from heights, strictly implement safety protection measures, improve the dual prevention mechanism of risk classification control and hidden danger investigation and governance, and comprehensively enhance the safety level of work at heights on construction sites.

5. III. Safety Lawyer's Reminder

"A single lapse can undo everything." We must resolutely eliminate "formalism" in safety work. The safety production responsibility system is the core of safety management. In practice, driven by economic interests, production and business units often show great flexibility toward the red line of safe development, and the phenomenon of safety production work being "important when talked about, secondary when acted upon, and abandoned when busy" has become widespread.

Comrade Mao Zedong once said, "The reason this army is powerful is that all who join it possess conscious discipline." Safety management is not a matter of complicated discussions or empty preaching, but of concrete action by every individual. Establishing a sound mechanism alone is not enough; we must remain vigilant at all times and keep the string of safety taut. We must shift our focus downward, keep our eyes fixed on frontline employees, and truly transmit regulatory requirements and the sense of urgency that "a single lapse ruins everything" after an accident, level by level, down to frontline employees. We must truly use "stories close to home" to warn "those close to us," use "those involved in cases" to awaken "those still dreaming," and use "a few cases" to educate "the majority." When working at heights, one must fasten the safety buckle that protects life and prevent falls from height from happening again.