OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14458350
HIGH WIND,TRUSS,ROOF,COLLAPSE,UNSECURED,PINNED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION
Event description
Employee pinned by trusses when roof partially collapses
Investigation abstract
In the afternoon of May 4, 1984, working from the second floor with a rented hyd they were about to set the prefabricated gable end unit and add more bracing fo r the night. There were three men in the trusswork and one on the floor 8 ft bel ow. One of the men saw trees waving violently, and yelled "jump". All did except Employee #1. An instant later the blow hit and 21 trusses over two adjacent uni ts at one end dominoed outward and also dropped into the second floor, pinning E mployee #1 in the collapsed trusses. While the foreman called an ambulance, the crew lifted enough trusswork to extract the employee and moved him to the first floor. An ambulance arrived in minutes and took him to Holy Cross Hospital, wher e he was examined and released a few hours later with no apparent injuries. He s aid he didn't remember anything between hearing "jump" and being in the hospital raulic crane, a four man crew set approximately 66 roof trusses on a 6-unit town . Back at the site the job was shut down by the fire department and posted "unsa fe" by a county building inspector, prohibiting further work until completion of a preliminary investigation the next morning. The "unsafe" signs were removed t hat afternoon by the county inspector who put them up. house. They started at a fixed gable end unit and proceeded, one truss at a time , to the other end, on 24 in. centers setting the spacing with 25 1/2 in. spacer blocks on each top chord. They also installed diagonal bracing on truss webs an d one run of lateral bracing on the front top chord. This arrangement fell subst antially short of the recommendations of the Truss Plate Institute, a copy of wh ich was provided with each bundle of trusses (1 bundle per townhouse unit). The foreman in charge of this crew had seen and read this paper. At about 5:45 p.m.,
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 25 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 31
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 8
- Occupation code
- 567
- Human factor
- 14
- Environmental factor
- 17
- Task assigned
- 1
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