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 #14449557

COUNTERBALANCE,WORK RULES,WALKING ON PLANK,ROOFER,WORK PLATFORM,INATTENTION,CONSTRUCTION,FALL,FALL PROTECTION

Event
COUNTERBALANCE,WORK RULES,WALKING ON PLANK,ROOFER,WORK PLATFORM,INATTENTION,CONSTRUCTION,FALL,FALL PROTECTION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14449557
Report ID
552700

Event description

Employee killed in 39 ft fall from plank

Investigation abstract

On April 20, 1987, Employee #1 was installing shingles on the roof of a balcony that extended 10 feet from the building. He was working from a 30-foot-long alum inum plank that had six bundles of shingles (weighing 480 pounds) as a counterwe ight. Employee #1 had finished one side and had removed the six bundles of shing les to reposition the plank when he discovered that his drill had been left out on the end of the cantilevered plank. When he walked out to retrieve the drill, the plank tipped, and he fell 39 feet. Employee #1 died of internal injuries whi le undergoing surgery.

Victims (2)

  1. #1 Fatality Age 32 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    5
    Source
    5
    Occupation code
    595
    Human factor
    6
    Environmental factor
    13
    Task assigned
    1
  2. #981 Degree 0 Age 0

    Nature of injury
    0
    Part of body
    0
    Event type
    0
    Source
    0
    Occupation code
    0
    Human factor
    0
    Environmental factor
    0
    Task assigned
    0

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.