OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14434278
FRACTURE,SPINE,AGRICULTURE,FALL,UNSTABLE SOIL
Event description
Employee fractures spine in fall into culvert
Investigation abstract
At 10:00 a.m. on December 11, 1989, Employee #1 was spraying herbicide on tall w eeds at the edge of sugar cane field #61. When he stepped on a badly rusted culv ert cover, it collapsed, and he fell 24 ft into the culvert, landing on soft dry dirt. The culvert cover was overgrown with tall grass and not visible. It was m ade of 1/8 in. steel and measured 32 in. by 36 in. Employee #1 was hospitalized for a burst fracture of L-1 with fragments in the spinal canal.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 60 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 3
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 43
- Occupation code
- 486
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 18
- Task assigned
- 2
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.