OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #879593
LIFELINE,WIRE ROPE,COLLAPSE,WORK RULES,BROKEN CABLE,CONSTRUCTION,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,FALL,TIE-OFF,SCAFFOLD
Event description
Employee dies in fall after suspension cable breaks
Investigation abstract
Two-man work crews were sandblasting and painting the interior surface of two la pension cables broke; as the scaffold end fell, it pivoted around the other susp ension point and the second cable also broke. Employee #1 plunged approximately 95 feet to the sand-covered tank bottom. He died. rge water tanks, 100 ft high and 59 ft in diameter. They were working from pneum atically powered two-point wire rope suspended scaffold units. The employer had provided a fall protection system which included independent lifelines, lanyards , and safety belt/harnesses. Employee #1 and a coworker ascended to the top of t he tank. The coworker left the scaffold and positioned himself on top of the roo f to gain access, through roof openings, to ceiling members which could not be r eached from the scaffold. Employee #1 remained on one end of the 20-foot long sc affold and temporarily detached himself from his safety lifeline. One of the sus
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 27 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 4
- 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.