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 #848226

WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,SAW,SPINDLE,STRUCK BY,FLYING OBJECT,BLADE,UNGUARDED

Event
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,SAW,SPINDLE,STRUCK BY,FLYING OBJECT,BLADE,UNGUARDED
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
848226
Report ID
524200

Event description

Employee killed when struck by exploding abrasive saw blade

Investigation abstract

On October 7, 1987, Employee #1 was preparing to saw cut a tennis court in prepa ngs to indicate the spindle speed. ration for repair work when the abrasive saw blade mounted on the concrete/aspha lt cutter blew apart, striking him in the head. He was killed. Investigation rev ealed that the employee did not use the guard because the saw blade's diameter w as too large to accomodate the guard. The blade blew apart because it was rated for 3,015 rpm, but the spindle speed of the cutter was 4,600 rpm. The employee h ad no procedure for testing the spindle speed of the cutter prior to mounting wh eels and the employee had never determined the spindle speed when the machine wa s purchased several years earlier. The machine did not bear any marking or warni

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 35 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    1
    Source
    26
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    6
    Environmental factor
    5
    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.