OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #894691
ANCHOR,RIGGING,COMMUNICATION TOWER,HOISTING MECHANISM,WORK RULES,BROKEN CABLE,CONSTRUCTION,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,FALL
Event description
Employee killed in fall from TV tower
Investigation abstract
At approximately 3:15 p.m. on July 25, 1989, Employee #1 was replacing a base-mo onnected the 1/ 2 in. cable attached to the orange hoist that was being replaced . Because Employee #1 had run only one cable (the 3/8 in. load line), he had to use the 3/8 in. cable as a tag line as well as a load line. After Employee #1 ha d exchanged the hoists, he failed to load-test the basket and new rigging system he had just installed. The company had been cited for this violation during an earlier inspection. In using the load line as a tag line, more pressure was appl ied to the anchor rod as the basket descended. The rod had been installed in wha t appeared to be backfilled soil 95 ft west of the tower. The anchor rod was not installed at an angle between 30 to 50 degrees, according to manufacturer's rec ommendations. At approximately 300 to 400 ft above the ground, the anchor rod pu unted drum hoist, which was being used to hoist a personnel basket with a smalle lled out of the ground, causing the 3/8 in. cable to become slack. The personnel basket free-fell for 150 to 200 ft. The basket came to a stop when the slack ra n out. The cable, under stress of approximately 1,300 lb, broke in two. The bask et fell, struck one of the horizontal members approximately 100 ft above the gro und, glanced off, and fell to the asphalt. Employee #1 was killed. r hoist. Employee #1 had reeved the 3/8 in. cable from the yellow hoist to a she ave wheel at the southwest leg of a TV tower, then to a sheave wheel installed a t the west side of the tower to allow the cables to deflect away from a chain li nk fence. The 3/8 in. cable was then run to a sheave wheel attached to a 3/4 in. diameter by 5 ft 6 in. long anchor rod. Employee #1 then carried the cable by a personnel basket to the overhead sheave wheel. After reaching the top, Employee #1 connected the 3/8 in. cable to the top of the personnel basket and then disc
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 27 M
- Nature of injury
- 6
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 24
- Occupation code
- 558
- Human factor
- 6
- 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.