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 #976225

KNEE,FRACTURE,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,PELVIS,RIB,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT,LEG,UNSTABLE POSITION

Event
KNEE,FRACTURE,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,PELVIS,RIB,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT,LEG,UNSTABLE POSITION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
976225
Report ID
551800

Event description

Employee injured when struck by falling paper bales

Investigation abstract

At 11:10 a.m. on January 5, 1989, Employee #1 was using a Hyster forklift to rem ove the top two scrap paper bales, weighing 1,900 lb. each, from a stack of four at an outdoor storage/staging area. He backed up 18 in. and then left the forkl ift to relieve himself close to the remaining stacks of scrap bales. He had turn ed to walk back to the forklift when the top two bales from the immediately adjo ining stack fell and struck him. He sustained a fractured collarbone, four fract ured ribs, and a fractured right femur. He also shattered his pelvis in five pla ces and badly shattered his right knee.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 59 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    1
    Source
    7
    Occupation code
    856
    Human factor
    11
    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.