OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #998872

COLLAPSE,POWER LINE WORKER,CRUSHED,GUY,BRACE,ELEC UTILITY WORK,FALL,UTILITY POLE

1988-08-03T00:00:00

Event: COLLAPSE,POWER LINE WORKER,CRUSHED,GUY,BRACE,ELEC UTILITY WORK,FALL,UTILITY POLE
Linked inspection: No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number: 998872
Report ID: 552700

Event description

FALL - UTILITY POLE FAILURE

Investigation abstract

A crew of three power line workers working for a power line contractor was repla employees went up in the aerial lift to remove the braces from pole #264. Witho ut guying or bracing the pole, the power line foreman on the crew climbed it, us ing his body belt and climbers, to help his coworker remove the braces. The last brace was removed, and the employee on the pole leaned back to find a place to throw the brace. When he did this, the rotted pole broke off at ground level. Th e pole and the foreman fell to the ground, and the foreman was crushed when the pole landed on top of him. He died of his injuries. (No autopsy was performed.) The employer was aware that the pole was rotted--it was marked as such in their work book. The crew, which had replaced rotted poles in this area for three cons ecutive summers, had spent a total of 15 to 30 minutes on the pole. cing rotted utility poles. The utility scheduled an outage, affecting about 30 r esidential customers, for 6:00 AM so that this work could be performed. The over head power line was deenergized on the west side of a highway; and the conductor s, which spanned the highway, were taken down. A wood preservative contractor ha d tested the poles in the work area and had marked pole #264 as a danger pole. ( This contractor had placed two square white tags on the pole to indicate that it was unsafe to climb without additional guying or bracing.) The power line crew, using an aerial lift and a digger-derrick, was to replace this pole. One of the

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 51 M

Nature of injury
21

Part of body
19

Event type
1

Source
15

Occupation code
577

Human factor
4

Environmental factor
4

Task assigned
1

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