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 #14394126

HEAD,DISMANTLING,SUSPENDED CEILING,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,CEILING PANEL,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,INATTENTION,UNSTABLE POSITION

Event
HEAD,DISMANTLING,SUSPENDED CEILING,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,CEILING PANEL,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,INATTENTION,UNSTABLE POSITION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14394126
Report ID
625700

Event description

Employee dies after fall through suspended ceiling

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 and a coworker were dismantling a 1 in. thick plaster ceiling that w as supported by metal lathe suspended by #8 tie wires. They would cut an approxi mately 26 square ft ceiling panel into about 6 square ft sections, each section supported by four tie wires. They would then cut the tie wires with bolt cutters and drop the sections approximately 18 ft to the floor. Employee #1 and the cow orker were on the ceiling and had cut one section loose when the section behind the one on which they were kneeling fell. Employee #1 fell head first to the con crete floor, sustaining serious head injuries. He died approximately two weeks l ater.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 35 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    5
    Source
    8
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    6
    Environmental factor
    8
    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.