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 #660167

OBSTRUCTED EGRESS,UNSECURED,PINNED,WORK RULES,CRUSHED,FALLING OBJECT,UNSTABLE LOAD

Event
OBSTRUCTED EGRESS,UNSECURED,PINNED,WORK RULES,CRUSHED,FALLING OBJECT,UNSTABLE LOAD
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
660167
Report ID
111400

Event description

Employee killed when struck by falling fan wheel

Investigation abstract

Employee #1, a hand grinder operator, had just lowered an approximately 8 ft dia flange width. The fan wheels were not positioned squarely on the support rolls s tand. In addition, the approximately 6 in. diameter support rolls had an undercu t in the center along an 11 in. length to approximately 4 1/2 in. diameter. One flange could have slipped into the recess. In the past, employees had spot welde d angle iron brackets to the frame of the support roll stand in order to prevent less stable wheel(s) from falling over. This procedure had not been followed in this case. meter fan wheel onto a support roller stand, using a Pendant floor-operated cran e. When he came around the side of the wheel to check its positioning, it tipped toward him. Employee #1 started to run, but was blocked by a steel scrap box th at had been placed approximately 2 ft from the roller stand the day before. Cons equently, he was hit in the back by the fan, pinned against the top edge of the scrap box, and killed. Though several employees were working approximately 20 ft away from the accident site, only one person saw the wheel fall over the fan wh eel. The fan wheel is supported across the rollers along only 19 in. of overall

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 43 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    3
    Event type
    1
    Source
    28
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    11
    Environmental factor
    8
    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.