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 #968461

FRACTURE,PARALYSIS,UNSECURED,BACK,INDUSTRIAL TRUCK,ELEC UTILITY WORK,STRUCK BY,SLING,FALLING OBJECT,UNSTABLE LOAD

Event
FRACTURE,PARALYSIS,UNSECURED,BACK,INDUSTRIAL TRUCK,ELEC UTILITY WORK,STRUCK BY,SLING,FALLING OBJECT,UNSTABLE LOAD
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
968461
Report ID
953220

Event description

EMPLOYEE STRUCK IN HEAD BY UNSECURED LOAD

Investigation abstract

A lead machinist and two coworkers were dismantling the bottom crusher from a la d sling. The cribbing either had been removed or shifted, allowing the entire lo ad to fall toward the heavy side and onto the machinist. He sustained a broken b ack resulting in permanent paralysis, fractured ribs, a punctured lung, and a fr actured skull. He was hospitalized for his injuries. rge 1723-kilogram boiler housed in a square box with piping. Because of the boil er's round bottom, the employees used two six by eights as cribbing on one side. The machinist was going to use a torch to cut the bolts from the bottom of the box that was holding the pipes, but the cribbing was in the way. He told one of the coworkers to hook a sling around the heavy side and use a forklift on the li ghter side to lift the box so that the machinist could move the cribbing and rea ch the bolts. The coworker did as instructed. At the machinist's signal, the cow orker then stopped the forklift engine, with the load being held by the forks an

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 30 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    2
    Source
    26
    Occupation code
    518
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    8
    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.