OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14394381
SIGNALMAN,CAUGHT BY,CONSTRUCTION,CRUSHED,STRUCK BY,SLING,OVERTURN,SCAFFOLD
Event description
Signalman crushed and killed under falling scaffold
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was using hand signals and a radio to flag a tower crane operator wh Employee #1 evidently became caught on one of the braces, causing the scaffold to tilt and fall over. Employee #1 was struck on the shoulder and back, and knoc ked to the concrete floor. He was crushed and killed when the scaffold fell on t op of him. The company vice president estimated the load weighed over 1,000 lb. Employee #1 had been a foreman and tower crane flagman for approximately two yea rs. o was bringing a load form anchored to a scaffold from level 23 to level 24, the top level at this stage of construction. Employee #1 was signaling by hand, in full vision of the crane operator, who brought the load into place and set it on the concrete floor of level 24. The area was level and, according to witnesses, there were no unattachable objects underneath the scaffold legs. Employee #1 wa s on one side and a coworker was on the other. Following common practice, they u nhooked the two slings on each side of the scaffold and held them until the cran e operator lifted them out of reach. One of the slings on the opposite side from
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 45 M
- Nature of injury
- 3
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 27
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 6
- 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.