OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14464747
COLLAPSE,CARPENTER,UNSTABLE SURFACE,FALL,SOFFIT,WORK PLATFORM
Event description
Employee Killed in Fall from Soffit
Investigation abstract
Some employees were assigned to lower and dismantle a wood soffit platform and s om the stem wall. This was the first of two cuts he intended to make for an open ing under a lowering hole in the concrete road deck above. The purpose of this o pening was to accommodate soffit-lowering equipment. The second cut was to be cl oser to the stem wall. At that time, the plywood stayed in place because of its tight fit in the soffit. However, this cut removed the support for the plywood, and, when employee #1 walked on it, it gave way. He fell 26 feet to the ground a nd was killed. upports, which had been erected to form concrete stem walls, a road deck for a r amp, and the main line at a span. To complete their part of the work, two carpen ters were to scrape clean and cut openings in the plywood soffit. The employees made an error in judgment as to where on the soffit the fourth of four openings was to be made. Consequently, they were working in an area not completely suppor ted by the 3-in. by 6-in. wood joists. After his coworker had scraped the plywoo d clean, Employee #1 made a cut with a gasoline-driven chainsaw across the 4-foo t width of a 4-ft by 8-ft by 0.625-in. sheet of plywood, approximately 3 feet fr
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 62 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 42
- Occupation code
- 567
- Human factor
- 1
- 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.