OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #676387

PPE,AGRICULTURE,WORK RULES,FATIGUE,DROWN,WATER

1989-06-20T00:00:00

Event: PPE,AGRICULTURE,WORK RULES,FATIGUE,DROWN,WATER
Linked inspection: No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number: 676387
Report ID: 1054113

Event description

Employee drowned in irrigation pond trying to locate truck

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was employed as a farm laborer and assigned to irrigation. That morn he resurfaced, the inner tube had drifted away a short distance. He began to sw im toward the inner tube and almost reached it before turning toward shore, when he apparently tired and started to struggle. Attempts were made to reach him wi th a pole, but they proved fruitless. He immediately sank beneath the surface an d did not resurface. Employee #1 drowned. One of the foremen dove several times attempting to rescue him, but could not find him in the murky water. The body wa s recovered several hours later by a diver. Factors contributing to the accident were Employee #1's minimal ability to swim, failure to determine his swimming a bility, failure to stop him from entering the water contrary to the plan, and la ck of adequate personal protective equipment and proper rescue equipment. ing, he had apparently failed to set the parking brake or leave the transmission in park when he parked the pickup truck on the road adjacent to the irrigation pond. The vehicle rolled into the pond and sank. That afternoon, a plan was devi sed and put into action to retrieve the truck. One foreman floated onto the pond on an inner tube and attempted to locate the truck with a length of PVC pipe, w hile the other foreman and Employee #1 assisted from the bank. A short time afte r beginning the search, Employee #1 decided to go into the water on another inne r tube. He then dove from the inner tube and attempted to locate the truck. When

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 19 M

Nature of injury
1

Part of body
4

Event type
12

Source
41

Occupation code
479

Human factor
1

Environmental factor
13

Task assigned
2

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.