“Tune In” with Michigan’s Public Safety Communications System

Hanging with Steeplejacks – Guest: Nate Salziger, Steeplejack MPSCS, Winter 2020

Judy: Welcome to our podcast, Tune In with MPSCS. I am Judy Like, your host for the show. I work in the Field Resource Center or the FRC here at Michigan’s Public Safety Communications System or MPSCS. And what we do at FRC is we take in the work requests and we send them out to the field for repairs on state police vehicles, DNR vehicles, etc., anything from the hood of the car to the tail end of the car. We assist with the inventory in our inventory system.

We have a fun and interesting show for you today if you’ve ever wanted to talk to a steeplejack, we have one here today. With me is Nate Salziger the second, a steeplejack for the MPSCS, who works who works in the grand region, located over on the west side of the state. Welcome to the show Nate.

Nate: Good morning, how are you?

Judy: Hi. Good to see you. Could you tell us a little about yourself and what you do at the MPSCS?

Nate: My name is Nate Salziger, like she said. I live in Grand Haven. I'm married with two kids. I do this job for them, that's why I do what I do. For MPSCS I go to the tower sites and maintain the tower sites themselves, and the towers and everything that goes around it, from the grounds to trees and everything. Judy: What does a steeplejack do exactly other than the general stuff. What do you get up on the tower for? Nate: So, when we get up on the tower typically, we're either putting equipment up there that we need to get better signal for surrounding areas, or directional signal microwave dishes. We either add something to the tower, or we're taking something off, or we're inspecting work done that people other than ourselves have done, like contractors Motorola SBA. We inspect what they do as well on our tower sites.

Judy: Okay, what's the largest piece of equipment if you haul up a tower?

Nate: We do have 12-foot microwave dishes. The most awkward ones that I've run into myself, are the Bogner antennas. They're six inches around and 25 to 30 feet tall. It's a very awkward piece of equipment to lug up there and just put in position. The Rope does the work getting it up there, obviously we carry the rope up, but once it's up there we bring the equipment up or product material we need - getting it where it needs to go is the hard part.

Judy: That's the precise work.

Nate: Yes.

Judy: It's a lot of precision.

Nate: Yes, and concentration.

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Judy: What's the largest tower that we have that you climb?

Nate: Four seventy-five (475) feet is typical. That's our most common height for any of the Towers being guywires or self-supporters, so anywhere from 300 to 500 ft.

Judy: What is a normal day like? What events or maintenance do you need to climb up there for if something goes wrong, what goes wrong up there.

Nate: Typically, if FRC or NCC calls us and says that they're having issues or alarm issues or signal issues, we would typically try figure out, troubleshoot from the ground first what's going on, whether it can be fixed from the ground or not, and then once we assess the damage up on the tower, we do a visual with binoculars, and then we, if we you know deem the problem is up on the tower, then we climb. We get together at the bottom, we get a plan and then we climb with the material we need so that we're not going up and down, because that's very strenuous and try to get the job done safe as possible.

Judy: Okay, so it's preferable that they have everything taken care of on the ground.

Nate: Prior to the climb, yes, because you don't, you don't want to have any redundancy, you don't want to have a guy hanging out there all day because somebody forgot something. So that's why we get together, we get a game plan and then we you know from there, we, you know pretty much listen to the boss man, he tells us who's going up, who's staying on the ground and what you're doing whether you're on the ground or on the tower.

Judy: Okay. Well, what is the coverage area that your area does the Grand region. How large of an area?

Nate: So, just the towers that I cover or the shop?

Judy: The shop.

Nate: The shop covers all the way from Lake City, so M55 to 131, a little bit east of that but not too much, all the way to the west, all the way to the coast and then all the way down to Indiana.

Judy: Huge area.

Nate: It is a huge area, but we don't have problems happen every day, you know, to where we're running to every tower site every day.

Judy: Does that area have any challenges there that the rest of the state doesn't have?

Nate: I think honestly the most challenging area would probably have to be the U.P. due to its inclement weather, you know, always windy, when they get snow, they get heavy snow, when they get ice, they get heavy ice. Where we're at, high winds, lightning strikes, 2

because all the storms we get, so we get a lot of lightning strikes and stuff like that, but that and that's also another issue that we go take care of if that does happen.

Judy: When you are up there are you just thinking about work or do you let your mind wander a little bit.

Nate: I mean, it's beautiful up there. That's one of my favorite parts of the job honestly is being on that tower up there. Just a quick story, I actually was on a tower in August. It was probably 100 degrees on the ground, it felt like anyways, but once you get above the treetops it's, you got a nice cool breeze and I actually heard a hawk cry, and I look down and he's ten feet below me just hovering.

Judy: Oh!

Nate: And it was so close to me I could see the feathers on his back moving and that to me that's Discovery Channel in my face and it was awesome.

Judy: Nobody else gets that.

Nate: Unless you’re a tower guy.

Judy: OK, Nate, how does a climb work from the base of the tower when you're setting up, what do you have to do, and how do you get up there.

Nate: So, like I said before we get a game plan going. Typically, what we do is we get everything we need for the job out and accounted for and then we get our gear out. Safety's number one with MPSCS and I think any tower crew going up on any structure safety has to be number one otherwise you guys don't go home. So, we set up, we inventory the tools we're going to need for the job, the material we're going to need for the job and then prior to going up everybody checks each other's safety gear just to make sure that everybody is in accordance and safe have the right gear for the job, and then when we get climbing then we hook up to the tower and we literally defy gravity and climb up that thing.

Judy: Okay, well how long are you up there at a time? You get, how does this work? Do you take breaks? Do you do it when they come down when the job is done?

Nate: Once you're on that tower, that's why we get a game plan, once you're on the tower you're pretty much on there until the job is done, unless weather permits otherwise, you know if lightning strikes or huge storm rolling in, high winds coming in where we can't safely do the job, then we would come down but typically you're up there till the job is done. So, I mean we've been up there eight hours before, we've been up there two hours, you know, or an hour for an inspection, or just depends, you know, depends on the job and the severity of it.

Judy: Okay, um, when and why did you enter this particular field? When did you start? 3

Nate: Mm, the rush. I started with MPSCS July 1st, 2019. I really like the job. I love the people I work with. I love the benefits. It's hard to find a company nowadays that cares as much about your family as you do and so what I found with this company is they're very family oriented and I love that and it's hard to find that in a company. So, when I started this job you know, I knew I would be climbing and you know I haven't climbed a long time, but it was, I thought my life process would be a little different now that I'm older, and it's got to be in your blood, because once I was on that tower and up in the air it second nature, awesome,

Judy: Excellent

Nate: I love it. I love it.

Judy: What was the first tower that you climbed back years ago and why, what were you thinking?

Nate: Um, really it was iron work and I had to do a horizontal. So, I climbed up and typically an elevator takes us up and then there's a cable you clip off to the cable and you walk 40 feet across horizontally, and I was 20, 22, 21, somewhere in there and it was very scary. But I knew right then I loved doing that. I've always done outdoor jobs, very adventurous jobs. I was a roofer for 11 years and never in the same place more than once for like roofing, you're always on a different job and it just, I like being outdoors and you know outdoors 500 feet in the air? That's fun.

Judy: That's nuts, but I'm glad you have a good time.

Nate: Someone’s gotta’ do it.

Judy: What challenges or hurdles do you encounter in your line of business? What do you run into?

Nate: Typically inventory stuff, so like when it comes to tower stuff, we pretty much got that down. We, you know, our boss Mr. Rodney Anway, he usually has everything we need for the tower, whether it be antennas dishes stuff like that, it goes into a well-thought-out plan. If accidents happen, we usually have backups for those. But challenges in the shelter, like if a generator blows a radiator, we have to go in there and fix that radiator while these things are 20 years old some of them, so it's hard to find a radiator that's 20 years old that hasn't been cycled out. So, stuff like that, how we have to outsource, and we pretty much have to research where we could get these parts, so that's one of my biggest hurdles with this job myself, is uh searching up equipment for existing equipment.

Judy: Okay I can see that. Now you mentioned the shelter, most people think steeplejacks when they think of the tower itself, but there's most of the workers on the grounds, right?

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Nate: Yeah, because if you don't have a stable ground, you're not going to have a stable tower, so we have to keep everything away from the tower a certain range, especially with guy wires and stuff. You can't have trees fall on a guy wire because that would totally degrade the integrity in that tower at that section, and possibly all the way the rest of the way up to the top. So, we cut the trees down around the surrounding area. We keep the grass mowed so we don't have to walk through 6 foot of grass and get ticks all over us. We maintain the shelter, we maintain the cages around the shelter, and the area around the shelter, and around the guy wires, and pretty much the whole property.

Judy: And everything inside.

Nate: And everything inside.

Judy: Which entails what?

Nate: HVAC. The room has to stay at a certain temperature for all the computer equipment to run at an efficient rate, and if it gets too hot it overheats. If it gets too cold in there, obviously it can't perform as well either, so we take care of the heaters and the HVAC, which is pretty much the same unit. We take care of the generator just in case a loss of power, the generator kicks on, so the generators have to be able to kick on and run the right way, and we maintain those to make sure that that happens.

Judy: So, there's alarms that would go off those come into the NCC, they get the alarm, and they kick it out to the steeplejack's in the field to go take care of it.

Nate: Yep, or the communications guys. It depends on what's wrong. The NCC and FRC, they get alarms for everything, so if it is steeplejack based, we go and take care of it and sometimes the communication guys are on-call and they'll deem whose job it is. If it is something that they're not familiar with, they will call a steeplejack as well, but for the IP addresses and some of the alarming systems, and the new stuff like the TCU 800’s, the communication guys typically take care of that.

Judy: They can do that.

Nate: Yup.

Judy: All right, what's the one thing you wish you had known when you began your career as a steeplejack?

Nate: I wish I would have known about it sooner. I just recently moved back to Michigan three years ago and my wife does ultrasound, and I'm a big hunter and fisherman. I love being outdoors. If I am not with my family or at work, I'm outdoors in the woods or on my boat. I love Michigan, born and raised in Michigan. If I would have known about this job 20 years ago, I would have jumped all over it.

Judy: You would have been climbing for us 20 years ago. 5

Nate: Yes ma'am.

Judy: Nice that's what we like to hear and we're going to take a little break and we'll be right back.

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Judy: All right welcome back to our podcast. This is Judy. I'm talking with Nate, who's a steeplejack with MPSCS. And so we see that there's a big demand for steeplejacks with the 5G coming onto the system. What advice would you give somebody interested in climbing towers?

Nate: Well to the first question 5G coming into the system, we really don't deal with the 5G side of things unless an outside entity is coming on to our tower site. In that case we watch what they're doing, monitor what they're doing, whether they're being safe. One of the state workers has to be on site when an outside entity is on our tower, and then prior to completion we check the work and make sure it's to the state standards. Giving someone information and what they would want to do here, really, I mean you have to know your stuff. You have to be able to take in a lot of information, like I said. Climbing the tower there is a fear factor for newbies when they're climbing the tower and they get some, you know, ground under them, real fire under them. It's just getting the nerve to get over that and then they have to know all this stuff on the inside too, so right now I'm a sponge. Everything my boss and my trainer says, I am writing down notes, I am, you know, watching hands-on what he does, why he does it and I ask questions too. So just ask a lot of questions be safe, safety is number one, and watch what your trainer is doing.

Judy: Great. Does it help if you've got some sort of a background in electrical or mechanical?

Nate: Absolutely, absolutely. If they if you do have an electrical background obviously, you're going to’ be a step ahead of some of the other guys. A lot of the guys when they climb, you know just getting into the field, I talked to a lot of communications guys at a NATE convention recently, and when they first got into it, they had no idea what they were even doing. They thought what everyone else thinks, I'm going to climb a tower. Well, there's 6

tons of stuff that goes with it. Obviously, safety number one, you have to know what you're doing when you get up there, how to hook these brackets up, these braces up. What to do with the rope to get it up there safely, to draw up your equipment. There's a ton of stuff you have to learn and you're never going to get a start if nobody gives you a chance. But there are training courses as well where they teach you safety and stuff like that and that's usually company based.

Judy: Good. OK. Does it take a certain type of personality or background?

Nate: Yeah, I mean you’ve got to be outgoing. Obviously, you can't be afraid of heights. I mean this is not the job you want to start and try to get over your fear of heights because they pretty much throw you on the tower the first day. So, they put you up there and they just want to see how you act under pressure and see what you do. If you know your stuff, you're gonna’ get up there and do it.

Judy: They don't maybe step you up 50 feet this day and 100 tomorrow?

Nate: No, they want to see what you're comfortable with and how you do. They definitely want to see if you're safe, use safe practices and use all your gear.

Judy: This question is just for me and it probably never happened with the state but how dramatic is it when something gets dropped off of a tower?

Nate: Well, that all depends, I mean, obviously if lives are lost, that's horrible and tragic, but I mean, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of material on some of these antennas, especially with like you were saying earlier with the 5G and all that? When they raise one brace, I mean, there might be 4 antennas on that thing, who knows how much that's worth. So that's a lot of downtime for the company who's putting it up, a ton of downtime for the manufacturers of this because now they have to send more antennas, and whoever bid the job is going to eat the cost of that. And god forbid anybody get hurt, so obviously if something falls off that tower, we just try to mind their P's and Q's. If something falls off the tower, I mean that's …

Judy: That's a bad day at work.

Nate: Yes, it is. It has never happened when I was on the job. Years ago, it did in my 20s, you know we had a guy fall once and that was horrible. And stuff, nuts, and bolts, but still, could severely injure somebody, so we just try to man that.

Judy: Right, right. Can you tell us about the enhanced training your group goes through including the safety training and rescue operations?

Nate: So, every year we get together with the Lansing Fire Department, this year we did that the Lansing Fire Department. I don't know who they've gone to in the years prior but they're their training and safety rescue training and safety as well, just safety, like practices that you use every day. Don't be complacent, you know, make sure you're 7

checking your gear. When you take your pouch out, make sure you're looking at all your stuff make sure there's no holes in your pouch to drop a wrench 300 feet. Make sure all your harness straps are not frayed. With the rescue part, they just teach us, they put us in different scenarios, and we go up the tower and you're either the victim being saved or the person saving them, which we call the hero. And we get put in those situations, so you might be in the middle of a cross bracket, and you might be on the leg of a tower and that rescue for each one is totally different. And when you're out in the field something completely different could happen, somebody could be bleeding out, someone could have a broken leg, and then you have the adrenaline. So, the way you make decisions under pressure like that might be a little different, but they try to get us acclimated to know exactly what to do in this situation. Stay calm. Be safe. Obviously if someone needs to be rescued, I'm not going to climb the tower in an unsafe manner, you know, just to get up there fast. I still have to be safe myself, you know when you're in a plane you hook the mask up to yourself then you help others. It may be instinct to get your kids first and stuff like that, and I probably would do that too, but if you do something could happen where both you perish. So, they just try to teach us very safe practices put us in different scenarios, so we don't run into any complications.

Judy: So, it's possible that somebody gets injured on a tower and you have to get them off the tower first, obviously, so they can go down to the ground, or, and they go up off a helicopter?

Nate: I've never done helicopter rescue. I'm sure it's been done, especially on the giant cellphone towers and stuff like that that are 1,800 feet, 1,900 feet, 2,000 feet out in the Midwest. Typically I would, if I'm rescuing someone, I would assess the situation. If they're conscious, can they help me once I get up there, or if they're just dangling. If they're just, you're doing it all by yourself, so you would actually take your rigging rope with you when you climb up to them, you get it, you get something situated to where both of you, so you can hook him to you if he's unconscious, and get you both down safely. So typically, that's what we would do.

Judy: Wow.

Nate: And also, if we are on a tower and it's not feasible to get up there fast enough and someone is hurt very badly, the MSP they do offer aviation support too where they could fly in and do a helicopter lift off of the tower to bring a man down to safety.

Judy: Um, what's the one common myth about your profession or that field that you would like to debunk?

Nate: Well …

Judy: Or a couple …

Nate: Everyone thinks that we just climb towers and that is a huge part of our job, because when it's needed, we have to do it, and it doesn't matter what the weather is. If there's 8

no 911 coverage, if there's no radio-to-radio coverage, obviously we have to get that fixed and we actually had a crew go up with very inclement weather, half inch ice all over the tower. They had to chip their way up the tower to get to the top of the tower, it was freezing cold, 30 plus mile-an-hour winds, and a couple of guys went up and they got that done. And that's stuff that, it's our job, so anybody goes out and does their job, but obviously that's very intense. We don't just climb towers, though, I mean we do everything. We maintain the whole site, we mow the grass, we take care of the trees around the site, we paint the site, we're jack of all trades, so steeplejack of all trades.

Judy: What advice would you give to somebody wanting to pursue a career similar to yours?

Nate: Study up, be safe, be nice, be courageous.

Judy: Push yourself a little bit.

Nate: Push, yeah, push yourself,

Judy: Practice climbing your TV antenna and at home maybe. (laughter)

Nate: Only if you do it safely.

Judy: Alright. Do you have a favorite memory of tower climbing? I mean you mentioned the hawk.

Nate: But just yeah pretty much just being up there. I don't know if people know but I take pictures of their houses all the time, like big farms, it's cool just seeing the landscape when you're at the top of a tower. I like postcards and when you take a picture from up there it literally looks like you're sitting on the wing of a jet, and you're taking photos off of it, so it's just cool. I love being on there.

Judy: That would be great day at work. That's it for today. We hope you've all enjoyed the show and I would like to thank Nate for being here to tell us all about himself and being a steeplejack. Thank you, Nate.

Nate: Thank you Judy.

Judy: You come back. We hope you all enjoyed the show, and we will be back soon. And be sure to look us up at www.michigan.gov/MPSCS and on Twitter @MPSCS. You can also subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and Google podcast, so you never miss an episode. And we will see you the next time. Thank you. There is much applause. All right!

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Narrator: You have been listening to Tune In with MPSCS.

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