July/August
2015
Performing
a task without the proper equipment—either to complete the task or to protect
himself on the job—cost this scrap worker his life.
In scrap processing, resourcefulness can be as valuable as resources.
So when a supervisor directed his workers to salvage the bolts from a
locomotive they were scrapping, they figured out a way to get the job done. The
procedure they devised was inventive, effective—and deadly.
The Kentucky Fatality Assessment
and Control Evaluation Program (Lexington) looked into the death as part of its
mission to investigate workplace fatalities in the state, then work with
professionals in the affected industry to create a set of safety
recommendations. It summarized the fatality as follows: “Scrap processor struck
by wrench and dies after makeshift torque system fails.”
In fact, the worker—a 42-year-old
husband and father who had been with the company for five years—suffered two
injuries: First, a large wrench hit him; second, he fell to the ground from a
height of 6 feet, hitting several pieces of scrap metal on the ground next to
the locomotive he was working on. Emergency medical services flew the worker to
a Level 4 trauma center, where physicians placed him in an induced coma.
Thirteen days later, he died from his injuries, which the report summarized as
“depressed skull fracture and subarachnoid hemorrhage, severe traumatic brain
injury.”
What
Happened
The scene of the June 30, 2014, incident was a railroad track
traversing a mining site in Kentucky. The employer of the deceased worker, a
company established in 2007 and headquartered in another state, is a ferrous
and nonferrous metal recycling company with 20 employees. The job at hand was
to scrap locomotives on the track.
According to the FACE report, the
supervisor that day told John (not his real name) to salvage the main bolts on
the flywheel of one of the locomotives the company was scrapping. The crew had
already put a lot of work into the project.
Normally, the scrap workers would
remove bolts with a torch, but that method would have made the recovered bolts
unusable. The next choice would have been a hydraulic wrench, which would have
provided enough tension to loosen the large, heavy bolts, but they didn’t have
one, so John and his co-workers improvised. He wrapped one end of a 48-mm
wrench with a makeshift sling—specifically, a Haul Master double polyester
sling with a vertical lifting capacity of 6,400 pounds—and tied the other end
to a grapple attachment on an excavator. John fit the wrench onto the first
bolt. The excavator operator applied tension to the sling. Success! The bolt
loosened, so John signaled the operator to lower the tension and moved the
wrench to the next bolt.
This makeshift torque system worked
for 40 bolts. On the 41st, John signaled the excavator operator to apply
tension to the sling, then he grabbed the sling and leaned over to have a look
at the bolt. Just then, the wrench slipped off the bolt, shot out, and struck
him on the right side of his bare head.
Would this injury alone have killed
him? Maybe, but maybe not. We’ll never know, because after the wrench hit him,
he fell 6 feet to the ground. There was no guardrail on the locomotive flywheel
where he was working. The workers had already removed it before they started to
recover the bolts. John sustained further injuries in the fall when he struck
loose scrap on the ground.
What Should
Have Happened
In its 2014 overview of fatalities in the scrap recycling
industry, ReMA summarized the causes of John’s death as “failed to use PPE,
guard rail, and fall protection.” In other words, if John had been wearing a
hard hat and other personal protective equipment, if the guardrail had been in
place, if he had used other fall protection, or if he had been given the proper
tools for the job, he might still be alive today.
The FACE investigation made the
following recommendations based on its analysis of this fatality.
--Employers should ensure employees use appropriate tools for the
required job. When the employer instructed workers to salvage the bolts, it
should have provided a hydraulic wrench to do so.
--Employers should ensure employees use appropriate PPE (such as
hard hats) and fall protection. Although the employer required the use of PPE
and provided the hard hats and safety glasses for this job, the supervisor did
not enforce the use of the PPE at the worksite, and the workers did not wear
it. A hard hat might have deflected the impact of the wrench on the victim’s
head when it struck him.
--Employers should require guarding or ensure that employees use
fall protection when they are working 4 feet or more above ground. Prior to the
work they were performing at the time of the incident, the workers had removed
the guardrail, and they were not using any other form of fall protection while
working 6 feet above the ground. Had the railing or fall protection been in
place, it could have prevented the victim from falling onto scrap metal pieces
that were on the ground, possibly reducing his injuries.
--Employers should develop and implement a comprehensive safety
and health program that includes an operating procedure for removing bolts on a
locomotive flywheel. Kentucky Occupational Safety and Health (Frankfort)
requested the company’s safety and health program, but the company did not
furnish it to the KY OSH inspector. This failure left the company vulnerable to
safety and health citations and fines. KY OSH requires that all businesses
provide a safe work environment for their employees and establish and implement
comprehensive safety and health programs and policies to instruct employees on
how to work safely.
Kentucky
FACE is a program of the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center at the
University of Kentucky’s College of Public Health. For more information, visit
www.mc.uky.edu/kiprc/projects/KOSHS.