OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #822908
KNEE,FRACTURE,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,BALER,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT,SPRAIN,LEG,UNSTABLE LOAD
Event description
Employee injured when struck by falling bales
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 worked for a company that manufactured sheet from used trim scrap. T unchroom. When he reached the bales, the top two bales tipped over and knocked h im to the floor. The baler operator immediately removed one bale and was helped in removing the second bale. Employee #1 was hospitalized with a broken leg, a t wisted ankle, sprained knee, and laceration to the forehead. he scrap was in 3-ft by 4-ft by 5-ft bales. Normally, the bales were immediately loaded into a waiting boxcar, but frequently there was no boxcar waiting. In su ch cases, a powered industrial truck with a clamp would stack the bales no more than three high near the baler. The baler operator, who had 1.5 years of experie nce, said that when he saw bales tipping he usually adjusted them with his truck . On the day of the accident, he noticed a bale tipping, but was unable to uprig ht it because he was temporarily without a truck. He avoided the area until he g ot his truck. Meanwhile, however, Employee #1 passed through the area from the l
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 49 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 7
- Occupation code
- 864
- Human factor
- 14
- 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.