OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14480792
CHEST,FRACTURE,ABDOMEN,HEMORRHAGE,OBSTRUCTED VIEW,WORK RULES,MECHANIC,CRUSHED,INDUSTRIAL TRUCK,COMMUNICATION
Event description
Employee killed when struck by forklift load
Investigation abstract
At approximately 3:20 p.m. on Monday, January 4, 1988, Employee #1 was replacing ught Employee #1 must be behind the container. He lowered the container onto the back of Employee #1, who was at the front operator side of the load. Employee # 1 was crushed and killed. His death was attributed to multiple fractures, intern al injuries, and hemorrhaging caused by compression of his chest and abdomen. Em ployee #1 had worked as a mechanic repairing ship cargo containers for approxima tely 8 years. two 4 ft by 5 ft sections of wood flooring in a 20 ft open-top container. He ha d burned off the heads of approximately 48 screws that held the decking to the f rame. He then signaled his foreman, the forklift operator, who placed the 22,000 lb capacity forks under the container and elevated it approximately 3 1/2 feet. Employee #1 then placed a 17 3/4 in. long by 2 1/2 in. diameter steel pipe betw een the container and the ground. The operator lowered the approximately 5,070 l b container onto the pipe, dislodging the flooring on the backside. The operator then lifted the load to 3 1/2 feet again. He waited and, not seeing anyone, tho
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 46 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 30
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 11
- 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.