KEY POINTS:
An Auckland man has been learning how to live without his legs for the past year after he was left paralysed when he fell from scaffolding.
Wally Noble, 40, was left paralysed from the chest down after he tumbled six metres down a lift shaft at an Auckland building site last March.
The Takanini resident said he fell through a hole which had not been properly hand-railed.
Mr Noble said the past year had been a "long, hard road".
He had spent months in hospital and and had to make changes to his everyday life.
"I had water in the lungs, blood in the lungs and I spent about four months in the spinal unit learning how to live without my legs.
"We had to have the house done up, new bathroom and that, to make it wheelchair friendly," he said.
Since last July there have been 45 accidents involving scaffolding leading to serious injury reported to the Department of Labour.
In the past up to 63 incidents causing serious harm were reported. Of these, 32 occurred in Auckland.
Department of Labour service manager Craig White said: "There is a real need to improve the structural assembly of scaffolds.
"An incorrectly constructed scaffold is a dangerous and potentially fatal scaffold, it's that simple."
Mr Noble, owner of Noble Scaffolding in Papakura, never thought he would have a bad fall, having worked in the scaffolding business for 20 years.
Yesterday, he spoke to a big group of workers and representatives in the scaffolding business about raising scaffolding safety standards.
The meeting was organised by the Department of Labour's safe scaffolding practice project, after inspections of commercial and residential construction sites in the Auckland and Northland region in the past three months found 59 per cent of scaffolding did not pass safety checks.
Fifty-one per cent of those construction sites failed on platform checks.
"I'm a man of 20 years experience - I thought I'd never get hurt and a lot of men will think the same. But don't slack off. With this, I just have to live with it now."
Being restricted to a wheelchair has not put Mr Noble off the business. With his son Graham, 19, he is carrying on the work.
