OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #977231
SEVERED,WORK RULES,LOCKOUT,SAW,SAWMILL,BLADE,COMMUNICATION
Event description
Employee killed when sawed in half
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 and a coworker were using a sawmill equipped with a 56 in. head saw to cut poplar and white oak timber for lumber. The coworker had paused temporari ly to measure the thickness of a cut, placing the carriage on "SAFE." Employee # 1 was at his work station at the carriage lever, on a platform 4 ft above ground level. The saw blade, which was running at 550 rpm, was not stopped. When the c oworker left the operation to measure the cut he did not realize that Employee # 1 had also left the carriage platform. The coworker was alarmed by a sound from the direction of the saw. When he turned to look, he saw that Employee #1 had be en cut in half almost vertically by the saw blade and killed.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 24 M
- Nature of injury
- 1
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 4
- Source
- 43
- Occupation code
- 496
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 3
- 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.