OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14458665
SHOULDER,UNSECURED,METAL SHEET,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT,UNSTABLE POSITION
Event description
Employee Struck by a Piece of Falling Steel Sheet
Investigation abstract
Some employees were installing a shoring system consisting of steel sheet with i he ground and positioned it above and next to a previously installed sheet so th at it could be started into the interlock by another employee. The crane operato r landed the sheet and was given a signal to lower the crane boom so the sheet c ould slide down into the interlock. This was the normal procedure as established by the company president. The sheets were attached to the crane by a plate clam p, which was attached to one end. The sheet had a 3-inch-diameter hole into whic h the plate clamp was secured by means of a screw. It is presumed that the emplo yee removed the plate clamp after the pile was landed, as he was standing on the pile next to the one that had just been put in place. All of the employees thou ght that the piling was secured by the interlock and proceeded with the next ste nterlocking edges. This system was to be used to block water from a stream that p, which was to drive the sheet, using pile-driving equipment, into the ground t o the appropriate depth. At this point Employee #1 and the company president tur ned away from the shoring system and began to walk away. The piling, which had j ust been put in place, started to fall in their direction. The plate did not fal l freely, since it was partially driven into the ground. It struck Employee #1 i n the back near his right shoulder, pushing him face first into the ground. He w as hospitalized for injuries sustained in the accident. Photos taken by State po lice within 30 minutes after the accident show that the lifting plate clamp was not attached to the sheet that fell. crossed under a road, so that the county road crew could install new pipe under the road. One of the employees, an equipment operator, was operating a 12-ton Ba ntam Teleskoop, truck-mounted hydraulic crane (Model No. T-744, Serial No. 42475 7). The crane was positioned on the east shoulder of the road, adjacent to the s horing system and in line with a piling that had already been installed. The ope rator used the crane to lift a piece of steel sheet, which was approximately 15 feet in length and 2 feet wide and weighed about 900 pounds, 4 or 5 feet above t
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 58 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 24
- Occupation code
- 869
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 6
- 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.