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 #692582

ROOF OPENING COVER,OBSTRUCTED VIEW,ROOF OPENING,CONSTRUCTION,FALL,BRAIN,COMMUNICATION,UNGUARDED

Event
ROOF OPENING COVER,OBSTRUCTED VIEW,ROOF OPENING,CONSTRUCTION,FALL,BRAIN,COMMUNICATION,UNGUARDED
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
692582
Report ID
355112

Event description

Employee killed in fall through roof opening

Investigation abstract

At 10:10 a.m. on April 18, 1988, Employee #1 and a coworker were preparing to fr ame a shed on the roof of a six story building under renovation. A 4 ft by 15 ft piece of corrugated steel was lying on the roof in their way. Neither of the em ployees knew that the piece of steel covered a 3 ft by 3 ft opening in the roof. The employees picked up the piece of steel by the long end, and began to walk w ith it. Employee #1, who could not see the surface he was walking on because of the size of the steel, stepped through the roof opening and fell through a gutte d stairwell shaft to the basement floor. He died of brain injuries 4 hours later at the hospital.

Victims (2)

  1. #1 Fatality Age 21 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    5
    Source
    8
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    17
    Environmental factor
    13
    Task assigned
    2
  2. #981 Degree 0 Age 0

    Nature of injury
    0
    Part of body
    0
    Event type
    0
    Source
    0
    Occupation code
    0
    Human factor
    0
    Environmental factor
    0
    Task assigned
    0

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.