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 #14386114

BOSUN CHAIR,LIFELINE,ROPE,WORK RULES,SAFETY BELT,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,ELEVATED WORK PLAT

Event
BOSUN CHAIR,LIFELINE,ROPE,WORK RULES,SAFETY BELT,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,ELEVATED WORK PLAT
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14386114
Report ID
521700

Event description

Employee killed in fall when bosun chair rope breaks

Investigation abstract

At approximately 8:20 a.m. on May 16, 1986, Employee #1 was working from a bosun chair, cleaning windows on the south tower of the Americana Congress Hotel in C hicago, Illinois. The rope supporting the bosun chair broke apart approximately 3 feet from the roof anchoring point. Employee #1 fell from approximately the 10 th floor to a 3rd floor courtyard roof area, a distance of 60 to 70 feet. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9:20 a .m. The employee had not been equipped with a safety belt attached to a lifeline , which would have prevented such a fall.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 44 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    5
    Source
    5
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    20
    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.