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 #14516447

FRACTURE,REPAIR,WORK RULES,ELECTRICIAN,FALL,WALKING ON BEAM,LOST BALANCE,PULMONARY EMBOLISM,UNSTABLE POSITION

Event
FRACTURE,REPAIR,WORK RULES,ELECTRICIAN,FALL,WALKING ON BEAM,LOST BALANCE,PULMONARY EMBOLISM,UNSTABLE POSITION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14516447
Report ID
420600

Event description

Employee injured in fall, later dies of pulmonary embolism

Investigation abstract

At approximately 2:00 p.m. on March 31, 1987, Employee #1, an electrician, was r lism. epairing an overhead dock light at a truck terminal. The light was hung from a b race near the ceiling, approximately 28 ft above a concrete floor. Employee #1 h ad brought a 36 ft aluminum ladder with him and leaned it against a wall to reac h the brace. He climbed to a roughly 6 in. wide purlin approximately 17 ft above the floor. After stepping onto it, he reached down to move the ladder with one hand while holding onto another purlin about 6 ft above the one on which he was standing. He lost his balance and fell to the floor, sustaining multiple fractur es. He was hospitalized and died on April 9, 1987, of a bilateral pulmonary embo

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 64 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    5
    Source
    25
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    6
    Environmental factor
    13
    Hazardous substance
    8880
    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.