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 #602102

FRACTURE,STEEL,WELDER,COLUMN,BACK,FALL,CRANE

Event
FRACTURE,STEEL,WELDER,COLUMN,BACK,FALL,CRANE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
602102
Report ID
420600

Event description

EMPLOYEE BROKE HIS BACK DUE TO FALL FROM COLUMN

Investigation abstract

An iron worker was installing a 17-ft vertical column section to a horizontal tr uss steel section. A crane was used to lift the column into position and held th e column in place with a choker. The employee temporarily secured the vertical c olumn to the truss with a small right angle metal erection dip weld at the base of the column. The top end was to be secured by two large bolts on each side of the column. The employee climbed onto the column to remove the choker that held the column in place. The temporary weld failed and he fell 20 ft to the floor be low. The employee suffered a broken back and was hospitalized.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 35 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    3
    Event type
    5
    Source
    42
    Occupation code
    999
    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.