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 #14397228

WATER TOWER,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,DESCENDING,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,PIPE

Event
WATER TOWER,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,DESCENDING,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,PIPE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14397228
Report ID
625400

Event description

Employee killed in 125 ft fall to bottom of water tower pipe

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 and a coworker were washing out the inside of a 125 ft water tower t hat had a 36 in. open riser in the center. It was hot and humid inside the tower . The employees entered and exited the tower by a rope that was extended from an opening in the side of the tower. Employee #1 was attempting to exit from the t ower when he somehow lost his grip and fell into the riser pipe opening. He fell feet first approximately 125 ft to the bottom of the pipe and died of massive i njuries.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 20 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    5
    Source
    8
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    6
    Environmental factor
    11
    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.