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 #14516355

HEAD,HIGH WIND,TRUSS,COLLAPSE,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,STRUCK BY,BRACING

Event
HEAD,HIGH WIND,TRUSS,COLLAPSE,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,STRUCK BY,BRACING
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14516355
Report ID
420600

Event description

Employee killed in fall when knocked from scaffold

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 and four coworkers were attaching plywood sheeting to a truss system shion from east to west. A falling truss knocked Employee #1 off the scaffold to the floor. He suffered a head injury and was killed. The primary cause of the a ccident was inadequate bracing of the trusses, as judged by the amount, size, an d location of the temporary bracing (mostly 1 by 2s). The workers on the scaffol d were not using fall protection at the time of the accident. recently installed at a church. Three coworkers were on top doing the sheeting. Employee #1 and the fourth coworker were about 12 ft above a cement floor on a manually propelled mobile scaffold, handing up the plywood sheets. The wood "pig gy back" type trusses were composed of 52 ft scissor trusses with small triangul ar pieces attached to their tops, forming peaks. The truss system ran along the length of the building from east and west. The sheeting was being installed on t he south side of the roof when a 25 mph gust of wind came from the northwest and created a parachute effect. A crack was heard and the trusses fell in domino fa

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 41 M

    Nature of injury
    6
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    1
    Source
    8
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    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.