OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14445183
ROOF OPENING COVER,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,FALL,ROOF OPENING,LOST BALANCE,COMMUNICATION
Event description
Employee killed in fall through roof opening
Investigation abstract
On July 25, 1988, Employee #1, of J.B. Eurell Co., Inc., who had been away from ng over the openings. Because the carpenters could not nail the plywood down, th ey placed a piece of 2 1/2 in. by 2 1/2 in. by 1/4 in. by 7 1/2 in. long angle i ron diagonally across the plywood to prevent the wind from displacing it. Accord ing to employee interviews, everyone except Employee #1 knew that the three piec es of plywood lying on top of the 5 ft square roof curbs were not secured. Emplo yee #1's helper was applying lap sealant on the roof and roof curb with a caulki ng gun and Employee #1 was feathering it. By the time they had run out of lap se aler, they had progressed to the east side of the curb opening. Employee #1 deci ded to get more sealant. He placed his hands on the middle piece of plywood, whi ch was lying east to west, and, as he pushed himself up, the plywood slid away f work for approximately a week and a half due to a back injury, was back on the j rom him, causing him to lose his balance and fall approximately 33 ft 6 in. thro ugh the roof curb to the concrete floor. Employee #1 was pronounced dead on arri val at the hospital. ob. He started work on the roof of the rolls storage area. The work involved cut ting the roof out to install roof curbs. After the curbs were set, the general c ontractor installed plywood covers. There were two different types of roof curbs : one type had a wood top, which allowed the plywood covers to be nailed down, a nd another type, two 5 ft square by 8 in. high roof curbs, had metal flanges tha t prevented the carpenters from nailing the covers down. The 5 ft square roof op ening had three pieces of 3/4 in. plywood that were 20 in. wide by 5 ft long lyi
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 27 M
- Nature of injury
- 15
- Part of body
- 25
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 42
- Occupation code
- 595
- Human factor
- 4
- Environmental factor
- 13
- 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.