Name: Robert Duckworth
Company Name: Fluor Corporation
City: Greenville, SC
Number of Employees: 40,000

Nomination Essay

Prepared for Anything

HSE manager rescues four teenagers from a crashed vehicle, receives the Silver Cross Award

Late one afternoon in rural Ohio, while traveling along a highway, Robert Duckworth was urgently summoned from the side of the road to rescue four young teenagers.

He was driving and came upon a teenage girl waving her arms frantically in the air.

“I pulled over and stopped,” Duckworth said. “She said, ‘We’ve wrecked, help us!’ So, I stopped and got out of the car and asked her if she had called 911. She said, ‘No, I was trying to call my mom!’”

The vehicle had slid off the right side of the road, traveled down over a snow-covered embankment, and crashed into a tree resting in a dry creek bed. The young girl told Duckworth her friends were hurt and trapped inside the car. He took account of who was there and looked down over the hill, assessing what looked like about a 60 or 70-foot embankment.

“You could see the tire tracks in the snow where they had gone off the road,” Duckworth said. “I thought to myself, “I’m going to have to climb down over that hill!” So, I called 911, gave them our position, told them we had three people trapped in the car, that there were four teenagers, and that we needed ambulance response.”

Duckworth quickly assessed the condition of the accident and walked back through the snow to his car.

“I quickly opened my trunk and got my construction boots, hardhat, safety glasses, construction vest and gloves. There was a lot of glass and metal, and I wanted to get down there as fast as I could.”

Duckworth hurried down the hill to see what he could do.

When he reached the vehicle, he noticed that the girl in the front seat had made it successfully out of the vehicle, but she seemed to have a hip injury, while the 17-year-old passenger still trapped in the back seat had a severe head contusion. She told him that she also had severe lower back pain.

When fire & rescue reached the scene of the accident, Duckworth assisted in extricating her out of the rear of the vehicle. The 19-year-old male trapped in the back seat had a broken leg and other potential internal injuries. Duckworth watched and assisted as local fire rescue personnel proceeded to free him with hydraulic cutting tools. He supported ambulance personnel to prevent shock and provided cervical spine stabilization. He also directed first-aid care to the other two teenagers.

The two entrapped teenagers were taken by helicopter to a Huntington, W.V., hospital. The others were transported to Pike County Hospital by ambulance. All of the teenagers have since been treated and released from the hospital.

Duckworth takes the Fluor HSE culture with him wherever he goes.

“I’ve been fortunate enough over my career in having first-aid training at the different Fluor projects," Duckworth said. "People laugh at me when I say I had my construction gear on. My kids say it’s such a ‘dad thing’ of me to do. But I wanted to make sure it was safe enough for me first, so then I could do what I could for those kids.”

Every year Fluor recognizes brave and heroic employees who assume responsibility for the safety of themselves, their co-workers, and those in the communities in which they work. For his selfless act of bravery, Duckworth was presented the Silver Cross Award -- the highest safety award an individual can receive at Fluor.

“It’s very humbling,” Duckworth said. “What’s really humbling is how my co-workers over here in Power are reacting. The word has gotten out, and they’ve got a picture of me printed out and hanging. People are coming over and congratulating me for what I did. I think it’s what anyone would’ve done. I hope that someone would do the same for my children.”

The truth is, the Fluor HSE culture has armored us for most situations. Always remember to stop, assess the situation and act safely. That’s what Duckworth did and he thinks all Fluor employees are equipped with the same Fluor HSE high standards.