OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14555098

HEAD,MAINTENANCE,PILE DRIVER,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT

1985-08-08T00:00:00

Event: HEAD,MAINTENANCE,PILE DRIVER,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT
Linked inspection: No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number: 14555098
Report ID: 931800

Event description

Employee killed when struck by falling cushion block

Investigation abstract

A crane supporting a diesel-powered pile driver was located on a floating barge. on. Employee #1 and a coworker removed a used cushion block from the hammer helmet. A new laminated 24 in. square by 12 in. thick plywood block was pressed into th e helmet and bridge spikes driven into it. The hammer was then raised approximat ely 50 ft into the leads in preparation to lift a second pile driver on top of t he first pile. The employees were standing on the drop leads, preparing to remov e a protective aluminum block from the splice plate, when the bottom 4 1/2 in. o f the new cushion block delaminated below the bridge spikes. The piece fell, bou nced off the lead webs, and struck Employee #1 on the head. He died that afterno

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 28 M

Nature of injury
6

Part of body
13

Event type
1

Source
24

Occupation code
999

Human factor
6

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.