104,543Records 70,659Employers 84,666Hospitalizations 27,563Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-09-30
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14515563

HYDRAULIC CRANE,FALL,STRUCK BY,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,FRACTURE,SHEAR,PIN,CONSTRUCTION,FALLING OBJECT,HEADACHE BALL

Event
HYDRAULIC CRANE,FALL,STRUCK BY,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,FRACTURE,SHEAR,PIN,CONSTRUCTION,FALLING OBJECT,HEADACHE BALL
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14515563
Report ID
420600

Event description

Employee killed when struck by falling headache ball

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was being transported from ground level to the top of an approximate ngers. He was killed. The manual fly retraction was caused by the shearing of a nonapproved safety pin. ly 75 ft tall natural gas holder. He was sitting atop a job-made compressed gas cylinder rack that held six oxygen and two mapp cylinders, and that was being ho isted by a Grove hydraulic crane, model # RT75S. The cylinder rack had been lift ed approximately 30 ft when the manual fly section retracted without warning and the rack dropped to the ground. Employee #1 was struck by the falling headache ball and suffered a fractured skull and sternum, a compound fracture of the righ t femur with almost complete severing of the leg, compound fractures of the left femur and right radius, and traumatic amputation of his left ring and little fi

Victims (3)

  1. #1 Fatality Age 28 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    4
    Event type
    1
    Source
    27
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    6
    Environmental factor
    6
    Task assigned
    1
  2. #981 Degree 0 Age 0

    Nature of injury
    0
    Part of body
    0
    Event type
    0
    Source
    0
    Occupation code
    0
    Human factor
    0
    Environmental factor
    0
    Task assigned
    0
  3. #982 Degree 0 Age 0

    Nature of injury
    0
    Part of body
    0
    Event type
    0
    Source
    0
    Occupation code
    0
    Human factor
    0
    Environmental factor
    0
    Task assigned
    0

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.