OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #722280
FRACTURE,INTERLOCK,SHAFT,FALL,ELEVATOR
Event description
EMPLOYEE KILLED IN FALL WHEN STEPPED INTO EMPTY SHAFT
Investigation abstract
On July 31, 1987, Employee #1 intended to use a manually-operated elevator in or mmed" the outer doors open and stepped into what he supposed was his elevator. T he elevator wasn't there and Employee #1 stepped into the empty shaft and fell, sustaining multiple injuries that proved fatal. There was a bank of fully automa tic elevators only 15 feet away that Employee #1 could have used. Employee #1 sh ould not have been using an elevator which required him to bypass safety interlo cks in order to use it. der to leave his office. Employee #1 normally used the manually-operated elevato r as a way of transportation to and from his office on the 11th floor. Since the elevator was manually operated, it could not be accessed by a call button, exce pt the fire key. The elevator would normally stay where Employee #1 had left it until the next time he went to use it. Employee #1 would have to bypass a safety interlock on the outer doors with a coat hanger-type device to access the eleva tor. On July 31, 1987, the day of the accident, Employee #1 used the elevator to get to his office on the 11th floor. When he wanted to leave the office, he "ja
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 29 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 5
- 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.