105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14296685

FRACTURE,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,BACK,INEXPERIENCE,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,BRIDGE,ELBOW,PAINTER

Event
FRACTURE,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,BACK,INEXPERIENCE,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,BRIDGE,ELBOW,PAINTER
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14296685
Report ID
352440

Event description

Painter fractures elbows in fall from bridge girder

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 had been hired as a bridge painter in the morning and was given 15 t to paint and fell. While he was falling he bent the bar toward the ground and s lid down it, dropping off the bar at an approximate height of 20 ft. Employee #1 landed on his feet and then fell onto his elbows and back, fracturing both elbo ws and straining his back. He was hospitalized for his injuries. o 30 minutes of on-the-job training by a coworker. Employee #1 was to paint the outside face of the bridge's fascia girder. He was to tie his lanyard to a movea ble 12 ft long, 5/8 in. steel bar that was to be placed through a 13/18 in. hole in the bridge's stiffener plates. When Employee #1 hooked into the bar he would then lean back, using his safety belt improperly for support purposes. Approxim ately 1 1/2 hours after he had been hired, Employee #1's lanyard pulled the bar out of the 17th stiffener plate hole as Employee #1 moved to the right to contin ue painting. Employee #1, not realizing that the bar was not secure, leaned back

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 38 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    7
    Event type
    8
    Source
    43
    Occupation code
    579
    Human factor
    20
    Environmental factor
    13
    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.