OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14477715
HEAD,INSTALLING,COUNTERBALANCE,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,HOIST,CRUSHED,STRUCK BY,INATTENTION
Event description
Employee killed when crushed by counterweight
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was belted to the tower of a personnel hoist. To erect the hoist, he and a coworker had been installing pins and tapering tower bolts. The coworker entered the hoist car while Employee #1 stayed on the tower, directly beneath th e counterweight. As the coworker moved the car up, the counterweight moved down, striking Employee #1 on the head. He fell backward and was left hanging from hi s lanyard. As the 7,000 lb counterweight continued down, Employee #1's legs acte d as a wedge and it swung out from its track. When the counterweight swung back in, Employee #1 was crushed between it and the tower. He died approximately 6 1/ 2 hours later.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 32 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 24
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 10
- Environmental factor
- 4
- 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.