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 #14397210

PLATFORM,WORK RULES,SAFETY BELT,CONSTRUCTION,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,LANYARD,FALL PROTECTION

Event
PLATFORM,WORK RULES,SAFETY BELT,CONSTRUCTION,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,LANYARD,FALL PROTECTION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14397210
Report ID
625400

Event description

Employee killed, another injured when platform falls

Investigation abstract

At approximately 9:00 a.m. on March 11, 1988, Employees #1 and #2 were about 70 ft above the ground sandblasting a water tower when the suspension pivot point m echanism on the platform system failed. Employees #1 and #2 were wearing safety belts with the safety lanyard connected to the suspension platform. They were no t, however, connected to a separate point on the suspension system, and they fel l to the ground. Employee #1 was killed and Employee #2 was hospitalized. The su spension platform had not been designed or constructed by a competent person. No engineering drawings were available. The primary cause of the accident was the failure of the suspension pivot point mechanism.

Victims (2)

  1. #1 Fatality Age 27 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    5
    Source
    24
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    6
    Environmental factor
    18
    Task assigned
    1
  2. #2 Hospitalized Age 20 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    16
    Event type
    5
    Source
    24
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    6
    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.