105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14512651

POWER LINE WORKER,WORK RULES,CRUSHED,UNSTABLE SURFACE,ELEC UTILITY WORK,STRUCK BY

Event
POWER LINE WORKER,WORK RULES,CRUSHED,UNSTABLE SURFACE,ELEC UTILITY WORK,STRUCK BY
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14512651
Report ID
523310

Event description

EMPLOYEE STRUCK BY VEHICLE BREAKING THRU ICE

Investigation abstract

A power line worker for an electric utility was operating a tracked digger derri e and the edge of the ice hole. ck being used to dig holes for utility poles. A chain saw had been used to cut t wo holes in the ice of a pond, one for the pole and one for the guy anchor. (The ice was about 630 millimeters thick.) As the employees began removing the auger from the digger, water started welling up through the holes. The vehicle starte d to settle as water covered the ice. The line worker, although told not to, tri ed to move the vehicle. The vehicle then began to break through the ice, prompti ng him to jump clear. Unfortunately, he jumped in the same direction as the vehi cle was tipping and was caught and crushed between the vehicle's left canopy edg

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 32 M

    Nature of injury
    3
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    2
    Source
    30
    Occupation code
    577
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    17
    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.