OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #892083
UNGUARDED FL OPENING,ALCOHOL,CARPENTER,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,INTOXICATED,FALL
Event description
Employee dies after falling through floor opening
Investigation abstract
On March 7, 1990, Employee #1 and two coworkers, all carpenters, were on the sec died six days later. Alcohol may have contributed to this accident. The paramed ics found one empty and one half-empty miniature bottle of Old Grandad in the em ployee's pockets, and a full can of beer was found in his lunchbox. The paramedi cs also could smell alcohol on the employee's breath. Drinking could have led th e employee to lose his balance and fall through the floor opening. ond floor of building #4 on lot #490, assembling walls and windows that were to be put in place later. The coworkers were working along the south wall while Emp loyee #1 was working in the middle of the second floor. He was next to a 3 ft wi de by 12 ft long floor opening for the stairs that would be installed later. As Employee #1 hammered nails into the wall section, he backed up toward the unguar ded floor hole. When he got to where the last nail would have been driven, he st epped into the opening and fell 18 ft to the concrete basement floor. Paramedics arrived and administered first aid until he was flown to Shock-Trauma, where he
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 35 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 13
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 42
- Occupation code
- 567
- 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.