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 #14544936

FRACTURE,CASTER,MOBILE SCAFFOLD,RAIL,CONSTRUCTION,HOSE,SKULL,SANDBLASTING,OVERTURN,UNSTABLE LOAD

Event
FRACTURE,CASTER,MOBILE SCAFFOLD,RAIL,CONSTRUCTION,HOSE,SKULL,SANDBLASTING,OVERTURN,UNSTABLE LOAD
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14544936
Report ID
418300

Event description

Employee dies of fractured skull in fall from scaffold

Investigation abstract

At approximately 11:50 a.m. on October 20, 1988, Employee #1 was on a mobile, ma nually-propelled aluminum scaffold (2 ft 5 in. wide by 8 ft 4 in. long) sandblas ting the ceiling and concrete block wall of a cotton mill spinning room. He was positioned 9 ft 6 in. above the concrete floor and had a 2 in. diameter sandblas ting hose wired to the scaffold part that he was using as a top rail. It appears that the weight of the sandblasting hose pulling on the narrow caster wheel ove rturned the scaffold. As Employee #1 fell with the scaffold to the concrete floo r, the back of his head struck the floor, fracturing his skull and killing him.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 47 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    5
    Source
    16
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    6
    Environmental factor
    18
    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.