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 #14305619

CHEST,HEAD,WORK RULES,CAUGHT BY,CHOKER SETTER,CRUSHED,LOGGING,CHOKER,COMMUNICATION

Event
CHEST,HEAD,WORK RULES,CAUGHT BY,CHOKER SETTER,CRUSHED,LOGGING,CHOKER,COMMUNICATION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14305619
Report ID
1050210

Event description

Choker setter killed when crushed by moving choker cable

Investigation abstract

At approximately 10:30 a.m. on October 22, 1988, Employee #1 was working as a ch ked log moved about 5 feet before being stopped by the rigging slinger. The majo r cause of this fatality was an unclear signal. The "one short" signal means to either stop a line or go ahead on a mainline: the engineer interpreted the secon d "one short" as meaning the latter. oker setter for a Madill yarder. He and two coworkers were setting chokers on lo gs in a depressed area not visible to the operator of the yarder, which was loca ted approximately 300 ft up an 80 percent slope. The rigging slinger blew one sh ort whistle to signal the crew to stop rigging. The crew did not hear the whistl e, so the slinger signaled a second time to stop the rigging. When the crew hear d the whistle they started to set chokers instead of stopping the line. Employee #1 had just set his choker when the rigging started to move, catching him in th e bite of the choker. His chest and head were crushed and he was killed. The cho

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 29 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    2
    Source
    27
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    4
    Environmental factor
    4
    Task assigned
    2

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.