LIFEGuard on Duty Award encourages living a commitment to safety in the community
Employees from Minnesota's 50 electric cooperatives brave the elements every day to maintain the grid infrastructure necessary to deliver safe, reliable, and affordable electric service to homes and businesses across all 87 counties of the state. The Minnesota Rural Electric Association (MREA) recognizes safety as a core value and encourages co-op employees to make a commitment on and off the job with the LIFEGuard on Duty Award.
MREA presented the LIFEGuard on Duty Award to Trevor Gwiazdon, a staking engineer at Beltrami Electric Cooperative, on Dec. 14, 2021. Gwiazdon prevented a severe accident and ensured that the crew went home safely by living his commitment to safety.
While checking on the construction of a new service, Gwiazdon recognized a dangerous situation with an energized primary underground cable. A construction crew had excavated around the cable, poured footings, elevated the energized cable, and ran it across the cinder block into the building, mistakenly thinking it was a lower voltage cable.
For context, the wall outlets in most residential homes receive 120/240V service while the primary underground cable carries 7,200V. Gwiazdon immediately stopped work, explained to the construction crew the dangers of handling a cable at that voltage and contacted the cooperative who safely took the line out of service.
"The LIFEguard on Duty Award honors those who have saved lives or prevented serious injuries. Not only do their actions have a lasting impact on others, but recipients also find ways to turn those experiences into teachable moments," says Lidia Dilley Jacobson, MREA’s director of safety and loss control.
“Trevor’s actions and willingness to speak up when he recognized a life-threatening situation, saved lives,” said BEC president and CEO Jared Echternach. “His actions are a testament to our culture of safety, and we are a better cooperative for it.”
In addition to providing electric cooperatives with full-day, onsite safety training, inspections, crew observations and other actions to strengthen the culture of safety at each organization, MREA’s safety department assists cooperatives with mutual aid in emergency situations and/or with power restoration, promotes public safety awareness and facilitates the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) Rural Electric Safety Achievement Program (RESAP) with participating cooperatives across the state.