OSHA Injury Report: Advanced Foundation Repair

At a glance

Where did this happen?

What was the outcome?

Before the incident

Employee was a member of the crew lifting and leveling a pier and beam house. The employee (along with the other crewmen) were working in a 36 high crawl space under the home with his knees resting on the soil under the house. The employee manually operated the 22 ton hydraulic bottle jack to lift his section of the house up off the pier in order to fill the gap and to level it with steel shims. The employee had just inserted a steel shim with his left hand into the space he created between the concrete pier blocks and the wooden beam and was preparing to insert another shim.

What happened

While on his knees the employee leaned and reached his body over to his right side to pick up another steel shim that was on the ground next to him with his right hand and supported his stretch by accidently placing his left hand on top of the concrete pier in the gap created when he lifted the house up off the pier. As he leaned over his movement caused the hydraulic bottle jack to slip off an unstable support base. This loss of jack support caused the 4 x 6 wooden beam to immediately drop down appx 1 vertically onto the concrete block pier amputating appx 1.5 of the employee 's index finger.

Injury or illness

Amputation of 1.5 of the left index finger tip.

Object or substance involved

(a) The wooden 6 x 4 perimeter beam dropped down onto the finger striking (b) the concrete block pier formed with one 2x8x8 block one 16x8x8 block one 8x8x12 block and one 4x16x16 block which stopped the fall and provided a flat surface for (c) the steel 3 x 5 x 1 4 shim on top of the concrete block where the employee 's finger was severed. Additionally the concrete blocks stacked up to elevate & support the bottle jack were not sufficiently stable to prevent the jack from tipping or slipping.

Summary line

Left index finger amputation

Employee and industry

When (timing detail)

Source

Data from OSHA ITA Form 300/301 electronic submissions, filing year unspecified. ITA Case Detail records are establishment-reported submissions, not OSHA inspections — no per-record IMIS deep link exists.