OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14547582
ALASKA UNLIMITED COMPANY
FAIRBANKS, AK·
Event description
Employee drowns when bulldozer slides into freezing water
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was using a D-7 Caterpillar bulldozer to spread fill material over i ce in an abandoned gravel pit. The thickness of the ice and the depth of the wat er beneath it had been checked by cutting holes about three-fourths of the way a cross the approximately 600 ft by 600 ft pit. The test holes revealed the ice wa s about 2 ft thick, but at some points touched bottom and at others had 3 to 4 f t of water beneath it. There was a sudden drop-off under the ice, where there wa s about 15 ft of water under it instead of 3 to 4 ft. At this drop-off point, th e back of the bulldozer slipped into the pit and was completely submerged. Emplo yee #1 drowned.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 32 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 41
- Occupation code
- 855
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 13
- 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.