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 #601799

FRACTURE,UNSECURED,AGRICULTURE,LADDER,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,NECK

Event
FRACTURE,UNSECURED,AGRICULTURE,LADDER,FALL,FALL PROTECTION,NECK
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
601799
Report ID
420600

Event description

Employee dies of broken neck while picking oranges

Investigation abstract

At approximately 9:45 a.m. on January 9, 1989, Employee #1 was discovered lying at the base of an 18 to 20 ft high orange tree against which a 22 ft ladder was propped. Because the employee was assigned the task of picking oranges from the tree, it was supposed that he was on the ladder when he fell in some manner to t he loose sandy soil, breaking his neck. Death did not occur until after two cowo rkers, heeding Employee #1's cries and at his direction, picked him up and carri ed to the workers' bus.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 62 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    20
    Event type
    5
    Source
    25
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    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.