Crane Army Reaches Safety Milestone

By Mr. Thomas Peske (AMC)February 1, 2010

CRANE, Ind. - Crane Army Ammunition Activity employees passed a safety milestone of more than one million hours worked without a lost workday incident in December and continue to go strong.

The milestone, marked from June 11, 2009, until Dec. 21, 2009, means the injuries encountered by CAAA employees were minor enough that no employee missed a full day of work after their injury. According to the CAAA safety officer, the significance of the one million hours without a LWD is huge.

"Safety is an individual responsibility and it takes everyone working together to achieve 1 million hours without a LWD injury. This milestone has only happened three times in 30 years," CAAA Supervisory Safety Engineer Walt Shearin said. "Achieving a million hours without a LWD injury is significant for any organization involved in the type of work we do. This is especially significant considering the amount of overtime work we have done to meet the demands of the war fighter. It is even more significant when you add in the experience factor. Several new workers have been added and workers have been shifted to work they were not used to doing to meet the workload requirements."

Shearin added, "Our workers have a can do attitude and place their safety and the safety of their coworkers above everything else. Now we are on our way to the two million work hours without a LWD injury."

While it is unknown how long CAAA will continue past this safety milestone, it is clear that it is part of a total effort to ensure the activity can always supply the Warfighter with its best.

CAAA was established in Oct. 1977 and is a tenant of the Navy Region Midwest, Naval Support Activity Crane. The Army activity maintains ordnance professionals and infrastructure to receive, store, ship, produce, renovate and demilitarize conventional ammunition, missiles and related components.