OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14506943
WINDOW WASHER,LIFELINE,ROPE,WORK RULES,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,INEXPERIENCE,FALL,FALL PROTECTION
Event description
Window washer killed in fall when support rope breaks
Investigation abstract
Employee #1, a self-employed window washer with approximately 1 month of experie nce, was suspended from a multi-story building with a new 1/2 in. nylon rope and a homemade harness similar to those used in rock climbing. He had made one succ essful drop to assess the job and to do some minor scraping. On his second drop, Employee #1's rope was cut by either his scraper or by excessive chafing agains t building surfaces. He fell and was killed.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 26 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 13
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 43
- Occupation code
- 448
- Human factor
- 6
- Environmental factor
- 18
- 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.