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 #998641

WORK RULES,CRUSHED,INDUSTRIAL TRUCK,MECH MAT HANDLING,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT

Event
WORK RULES,CRUSHED,INDUSTRIAL TRUCK,MECH MAT HANDLING,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
998641
Report ID
552700

Event description

EMPLOYEE STRUCK AND KILLED BY FALLING SHEETROCK

Investigation abstract

EMPLOYEE #1 (A LUMBER YARD EMPLOYEE) WAS PREPARING A DISPLAY OF 2 UNITS (80 SHEE TS) OF SHEETROCK. AN AUTHORIZED FORKLIFT OPERATOR WAS INSTRUCTED TO BRING A FORK LIFT TO THE STORAGE/DISPLAY AREA TO MOVE THE MATERIAL FROM STORAGE HEIGHT (APPRO X. 132") TO GROUND LEVEL. WHILE THE LOAD OF SHEETROCK WAS SUSPENDED OVERHEAD, EM PLOYEE #1 MOVED UNDER THE LOAD TO PLACE SPACERS ON THE GROUND FOR PLACEMENT OF T HE SHEETS. THERE WAS A SUDDEN FAILURE IN THE WELD OF THE ATTACHMENT CLEAT ON THE LEFT FORK, CAUSING ALL OF THE SUSPENDED MATERIAL (WEIGHING APPROXIMATELY 4960 P OUNDS) TO FALL ONTO EMPLOYEE #1. HE WAS CRUSHED TO DEATH.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 20 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    1
    Source
    27
    Occupation code
    268
    Human factor
    1
    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.