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Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #1002773

ROPE,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,DROWN

Event
ROPE,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,DROWN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
1002773
Report ID
253630

Event description

Employee drowns during rescue attempt

Investigation abstract

At approximately 6:00 p.m. on July 26, 1987, Employee #1 was rescuing two people caught in the rapids of the swollen Buffalo Creek in West Seneca, NY. He became detached from his safety rope and was swept over the dam into the strong underf low. He was unable to free himself and drowned. Employee #1's body was retrieved downstream a short time later. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was pron ounced dead.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 22 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    27
    Event type
    14
    Source
    41
    Occupation code
    417
    Human factor
    14
    Environmental factor
    18
    Task assigned
    1

Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.