My head was nearly crushed by a 500 pound wooden beam just 6 years ago. Here is what happened...
We had 4 men on ladders including me holding up this 500 pound beam. Two men were on the one end, and my dad and I were on the other end. We were approximately 8 feet in the air. My dad was trying to hold on to the beam with one arm as he used his other arm with the sledge hammer to pound the beam into the notch where it would be held. One of the men told my dad to just let go and have me keep hold of that end while he could get more leverage on pounding the beam. He said, "no I better keep holding it." It was a matter of seconds after that I tried to twist my body a bit to get a better grip on the beam, and my ladder came out from under me. I fell on my back to the hard wood floor below. My dad dropped the sledge hammer immediately so that he could hold onto the beam.
If my dad would have let go of the beam and used both his arms to pound it with the sledge hammer then the beam would have crashed right onto my head. The only thing I walked away with was a back ache.
