March 12 2008

Holly Jones from Riverbanks Zoo entertained us with Reptiles Up-close-and-personal.


President Beetle opened the meeting and Joel Price delivered the invocation. Sergeant-at-Arms John Hanson introduced our guests: Kevin Meetze, Darren Bouknight, John LaFond of the Chapin Sunrise Club and the District Foundation Advocate, and Carey Hite’s special guest, Maria Hargrave, of the Palmetto Health Foundation. Lyman Whitehead presented our health and happiness which included mention that Jeanette Coulter’s husband, Jerry, is in the hospital and Lynn Campbell has his 69th birthday on Monday, March 17. Patty Cavanaugh reminded us of the GSE event with the team from South Africa. President-Elect Eddie Robinson informed us that there will be no speaker at next week’s meeting, March 19th, instead, it will be a Club Day.

Eddie then introduced Holly Jones, a herpetologist with the Riverbanks Zoo, and her husband, Stan. Holly is from Maryland and has always had a passion for reptiles. She secured her degree from Towson University and worked at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, before coming to Columbia. Holly’s presentation was about the reptiles that live at Lake Murray.

She started by reviewing the turtles: the Eastern Box, the Eastern Mud, the Common Musk, the Common Snapping, the Yellow Belly Slider, the Eastern River Cooter and the Eastern Spiny Softshell. The Eastern Mud Turtle is the smallest, the Common Snapping Turtle is the largest, the Eastern Spiny Softshell is the fastest swimmer and the Eastern River Cooter is the most common turtle seen in the lake.

Holly then moved to lizards: the Eastern Glass, the Green Anole, the Broadhead Skink, the Five-lined and Eastern five-lined. The Eastern Glass Lizard is often mistaken for a snake because it does not have legs, however it has ears, which makes it as a lizard. The Broadhead Skink is the second largest lizard in the country and the Green Anole is the common one that you see around your house. It has the ability to change colors.

Snakes were the last reptile that Holly presented: the Northern Brown, the Eastern Garter, the Black Racer, the Rat, the Corn, the Eastern King, the Eastern Hognose, the Eastern Milk, the Red Belly Water, the Banded Water, the Copperhead, the Canebrake Rattler, and the Cottonmouth Water Moccasin. The Black Racer, Rat and Corn snakes are good climbers. The Black Racer is a non-constrictor, can grow to 6 feet and is very fast, thus its moniker, while the Rat and Corn snakes are constrictors; all are good rodent eaters. The Eastern King eats other snakes and is grumpy, and the Eastern Hognose feeds on toads, hisses loudly and rolls-over to emit a very bad odor as a defense. The Banded Water snake is often mistaken for a Cottonmouth or a Copperhead. The three poisonous snakes are the Copperhead, the Canebrake Rattler and the Cottonmouth. Cottonmouths do not live in Lake Murray.

In response to a question, Holly told us that there are a few alligators in the canal along the Broad River. She invited us to the Desert Gallery at the zoo, the display that she manages, to see the Puff Adders, the Green Mamba and the King Cobra, among some of the reptiles in the display.

The meeting concluded with Kelly Payne telling us that Dutch Fork High School will conduct the 6th class of Alive at 25.

March 5 2008

Minutes to Rotary meeting of March 5, 2008

Today’s guest speaker was Dr. Jeff Warren (PhD) who is the President and CEO of The Warren Group which located in Irmo. The Warren Group provides forensic engineering services to a variety of industrial clients, attorneys, and the insurance industry. Basically the company conducts accident investigations in order to help determine liability. The company has investigated over 1700 accidents since its inception. With a staff of 20 engineers (electrical, mechanical, and industrial engineers) plus support staff, The Warren Group has been engaged to investigate accidents, including product liability claims throughout the Southeast. The company is on-call 24/7.

Dr. Warren began his power point presentation with a picture (circa 1950’s) of a small boy standing beside an old gasoline powered reel lawn mower. He explained that the father allowed his son to help push the mower on occasion. Once while momentarily being distracted the father did not see his son attempt to dislodge a small rock that had been stuck between the cutter blade and the reel. The small boy attempted to remove the rock as he had seen his father do on previous occasions. The result was that the son lost his index finger. Dr. Warren said that this type of accident was preventable if 1) the father had not allowed his small son to operate the machinery, particularly unsupervised even if it was only momentarily. Secondly, the reel lawn mower lacked any type of safety guards preventing someone from sticking their hands near the blade when the motor is still running.

“Safety through Design” is a term that The Warren Group has copy written and is based on the premise that workplace injuries are preventable. Dr. Warren explained the investigatory techniques his team of highly trained engineers used to determine the root causes of these accidents (the term used by the industry is “incidents”) of which many have resulted in deaths. They attempt to gather the forensic evidence at the scene, interview witnesses, and to reconstruct the accident. Dr. Warren explained that it is very important not to jump to conclusions as he showed pictures of an industrial accident which involved a forklift and a scissors lift in which a person was killed after being knocked from the top of the scissors lift. He pointed out that the logical conclusion was that the accident was clearly the fault of the forklift operator who hit the scissor lift. However, the final investigation revealed that a certain electrical component on the scissors lift had not been properly repaired which had caused it to protrude beyond the normal “footprint”. This was a “contributing” cause of the deadly accident and therefore may have been preventable in the first place had the equipment been repaired properly in the first place. Dr. Warren explained that the purposes of their investigations are to determine “who else owns this loss”. As shown by this particular “incident” investigation blame can be assigned to more than one party.

Dr. Warren concluded his remarks by revealing the he was the little boy in the picture who had lost his index figure. This resulting injury motivated him to study engineering in college and ultimately start his own company with the mission that The Warren Group’s forensic investigations may result in the implantation of safety through design changes.

Submitted by Chip Lyerly