FARMER’S son Peter Rooke was lucky to escape with only a broken leg after falling 18ft through a roof light.

He crashed onto the concrete floor below and was airlifted to hospital where surgeons pinned his left leg with a steel rod.

His father, Mark, heard the crash and felt an overwhelming sense of relief when he heard Peter cry out in pain.

“My greatest fear was that if he had fallen on his head or back he would be dead, but when I heard him cry out I knew he was still alive,” he said.

The accident happened in June 2008, a busy time of year on the 300-acre family farm near Helmsley.

Peter was off work for eight weeks and the family had to hire contractors to cover his workload.

Now the family is helping the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to publicise its Make the Promise campaign – where farmers promise to come home safe.

Between January and November last year, 38 workers nationally lost their lives in farming-related incidents and more than 580 were seriously injured – 48 in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

On the day of his accident, Peter and his father were cleaning out a gutter between a farm shed and storage building.

Mr Rooke said: “The gutter cleaning is an annual job which we have to do to ensure that there is no water leakage when grain is stored in the building below.

“I would say we are very safety conscious in our work routine.

“It was a fine day but heavy rain was threatened so there was some pressure to get the job done.

“The roof had been boarded to enable us to carry out the work safely. I told Peter about the dangers before we went up, and to be very careful.”

The roof was made of 6in profile asbestos, twice as strong as normal.

The pair had been working for about ten minutes when Peter stepped back from the safety board and crashed through the roof light Since the incident, a safety harness and back rail has been fitted to the roof so anyone working there is securely held.

Peter said: “I must have momentarily lost concentration.

I have always thought about safety in relation to my farm work but this has made me more aware.

“It all happened in a split second. I was extremely fortunate.”

More than 1,200 farmers in Yorkshire and Humber have signed up to the safety promise and the HSE hopes more will follow.

Judith Donovan, HSE board member, said: “Over the last ten years, 455 lives have been lost on British farms – that is hundreds of families and farms devastated. Let’s make 2010 the year that everyone comes home safe.”

Find out more abou the campaign at hse.gov.uk/makethepromise.