OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #998377
FRACTURE,UNCONSCIOUSNESS,RAFTER,SKULL,FALL,STRUCK BY
Event description
Employee dies after stumbling to floor
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was working as a laborer for a contractor who was tearing down a rot ered a skull fracture. Employee #1 was then transported to St. Luke's Hospital i n Fargo, ND, where he was held for examination and observation. Employee #1 was stable until evening, when he slipped into a coma. He was pronounced brain dead at about 12:00 noon the following day. Employee #1 was then removed from life su pport and died at about 2:00 p.m. on July 21, 1988. ted wooden building and rebuilding it. The workers were getting ready to take th eir coffee break when a piece of a rotted wood rafter started to break loose. On e worker saw it and yelled a warning. The workers scattered in different directi ons. The 2 in. by 2 in. by 6 ft long piece of wood fell, hit the scaffolding, an d fell to the floor. After it hit the floor, the piece of wood may have fallen o ver and struck Employee #1 on the back (no marks were found). Employee #1 stumbl ed and fell face first to the concrete floor; he was rendered unconscious for a few minutes. He was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where doctors discov
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 26 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 13
- Event type
- 4
- Source
- 5
- Occupation code
- 599
- Human factor
- 4
- Environmental factor
- 6
- Task assigned
- 2
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.