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 #997890

MAINTENANCE,CONSTRUCTION,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,FALL

Event
MAINTENANCE,CONSTRUCTION,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,FALL
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
997890
Report ID
551800

Event description

Employee injured in fall after safety snap on lanyard fails

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was climbing a water tower to do painting and maintenance. He climbe irt. He landed on his feet. Employee #1 sustained internal injuries and a chippe d heel bone. The miller hook was still fastened to the tower ladder leg. d an 18 foot ladder to reach above an unauthorized persons barrier, then continu ed up the ladder leg of the tower to the 27 foot cross member level. He was wear ing a safety belt and lanyard, but did not attach a cable grab and the lanyard t o the vertical safety cable that started at the 18 foot level. At the 27 foot le vel, Employee #1 stopped to rest and attached his lanyard, which was snapped bac k to itself and a miller hook, a large safety snap-type hook, to the ladder leg with the miller hook. He leaned back to rest on the lanyard and somehow the lany ard safety snap came off the miller hook. Employee #1 fell 27 feet to the soft d

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 19 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    11
    Event type
    5
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    579
    Human factor
    6
    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.