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 #694158

HEAD,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,MIDRAIL,GUARDRAIL,INADEQUATE MAINT,CONSTRUCTION,FALL,SCAFFOLD,TUBULAR SCAFFOLD

Event
HEAD,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,MIDRAIL,GUARDRAIL,INADEQUATE MAINT,CONSTRUCTION,FALL,SCAFFOLD,TUBULAR SCAFFOLD
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
694158
Report ID
355114

Event description

Employee killed in fall from unguarded scaffold

Investigation abstract

At approximately 10:50 a.m. on December 24, 1985, Employee #1 was working on the ound, landing on his head. Employee #1 died of severe head injuries. A few days prior, a gust of wind had blown the end board down and Employee #1 had put it ba ck in place. The improperly reinstalled board plus the lack of a midrail were ap parently the causes of the accident. seventh buck level of a 75 ft long tubular welded frame scaffold, preparing to raise the scaffold boards to the next level. He was approximately 42 to 45 ft ab ove ground and adjacent to the fourth floor of a 5-floor office building under c onstruction. The scaffold had no midrail installed as part of the guardrail syst em. Employee #1 was walking toward the north end of the scaffold along the outer most plank when he stepped across the third buck from the north end. The board h e stepped from overlapped the end board and he could not see that the end board did not overlap the buck. The end board tipped up and down and he fell to the gr

Victims (2)

  1. #1 Fatality Age 27 M

    Nature of injury
    6
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    5
    Source
    42
    Occupation code
    869
    Human factor
    9
    Environmental factor
    13
    Task assigned
    1
  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.