OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14340566
CHEST,PILING,UNSECURED,CONSTRUCTION,CRUSHED,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT,UNSTABLE POSITION
Event description
One employee killed, one injured by falling piling
Investigation abstract
At approximately 9:20 a.m. on June 4, 1988, Employees #1 and #2 and a coworker w cutting torch to cut the strands before the piling would fall. Employee #1, the signalman, was standing next to Employee #2, who was operating the power unit 23 ft away from the piling that was being cut, and signaled him to release the cut ter. Employee #1 then signaled the coworker, who was operating the crane, to lif t the cutter off the piling. At this point the piling toppled and struck a secon d piling 14 feet away from Employees #1 and #2. This second piling, which had al so been sheared and was waiting for its wires to be cut, toppled over, crushing Employee #1 and grazing the chest of Employee #2. Employee #1 died immediately. Employee #2 was hospitalized with chest injuries. ere shearing prestressed precast reinforced 12" by 12" by 40 or 50 ft pilings th at had been driven as building supports for a new pulp processing building. They were cutting the pilings to the appropriate elevation grade for the installatio n of the floor. The procedure that had been used for the past three years was th at the initial shear of a piling would be performed by a hydraulic cutter suspen ded by a crane and operated from a power unit at a distance from the piling. Sin ce each piling had four wire rope strands inside it, the pilings frequently rema ined standing after the initial shear and the crew would then go back and use a
Victims (2)
-
#1 Fatality Age 22 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 40
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 11
- Environmental factor
- 8
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Hospitalized Age 36 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 40
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 11
- Environmental factor
- 8
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- 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.