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 #745265

BEAM,FRACTURE,STEPLADDER,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,SKULL,FALL,STRUCK BY

Event
BEAM,FRACTURE,STEPLADDER,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,SKULL,FALL,STRUCK BY
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
745265
Report ID
352420

Event description

Employee falls and fractures skull when struck by I-beam

Investigation abstract

On October 17, 1988, Employee #1 a carpenter's helper, and two coworkers were ma . The I-beam being set was 31 ft 3 in., although the plans called for a 31 ft 6 in. I-beam. The crew was short one employee. nually setting a steel I-beam into pockets in the base walls of a single family home. Employee #1 was in the basement on the third rung of a 6 ft wood stepladde r that faced the basement's north wall. An I-beam was resting on his right shoul der. The crew leader was standing on the ground above the north basement wall he lping Employee #1 position the I-beam. Another carpenter's helper was straddling the south basement wall, watching the positioning of the I-beam. The I-beam fel l, knocking Employee #1 off the ladder. He fell backward, striking the back of h is head against the concrete floor and fracturing his skull. He was hospitalized

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 18 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    1
    Source
    5
    Occupation code
    569
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    6
    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.