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Making a Positive Difference
OSHA Saves Lives
- Quick Action by OSHA Inspector Helps Avert Employee Injuries in Trench Collapse
When a compliance safety and health officer (CSHO) from OSHA’s North Aurora , Ill., Area Office arrived at a jobsite to conduct a trench inspection under the agency’s local and national emphasis programs, he observed an employee working in an unprotected trench that was six feet deep and three feet wide. The trench wall showed obvious cracks and fissures. The CSHO identified the hazards and the construction employer voluntarily removed the employee from the unsafe trench. The inspector immediately began describing the hazards of a trench wall collapse to the employee and other company officials. Approximately five minutes later, the wall caved in at the spot where the employee had been working.
- Quick Action by Compliance Officers Helps Avert Employee Injuries in Trench Collapses
OSHA's mission is to save lives. This was illustrated in three separate trench collapses where OSHA's compliance safety and health officers (CSHOs) were instrumental in preventing injury while conducting inspections under OSHA's Local and National Emphasis Programs (NEP). In each instance, the CSHOs identified hazards at the jobsite and the construction employer voluntarily removed the employees from the unsafe trench. In Wheeling, Ill., CSHO Gary Weil of OSHA’s Chicago North area office suggested the evacuation of a hazardous trench, which moments later collapsed. Another unprotected trench was evacuated just before collapse on the recommendation of CSHO Ken Montgomery of the Cincinnati area office. At a construction site in Madison, Wis., CSHOs Alan Angle and Chad Greenwood of the Madison area office identified two hazardous excavations, both of which collapsed just minutes after being cleared of employees. No one was injured in any of these incidents thanks to the quick action
and insight of the CSHOs. OSHA's Working Safely in Trenches QuickCard® (English [HTML] [PDF] / Spanish [HTML] [PDF]) is a resource for identifying and preventing safety hazards associated with trenching.
- Compliance Officer Protects Employees from Trench Collapse
On June 7, while driving through Madison, Wis., Compliance Safety and Health Officer (CSHO) Chad Greenwood of OSHA's Madison area office observed work being performed at an excavation site. The CSHO saw a potentially unsafe trench and stopped to initiate an inspection. When the trench conditions were closely examined, the trench was found to be unsupported and unstable. The CSHO warned the foreman that no one should enter the trench. The contractor had been preparing to place an inlet box for a storm sewer. During the opening conference with the employer, a portion of the trench wall collapsed. Luckily, no one was hurt because of the CSHO's quick actions. OSHA's Working Safely in Trenches QuickCard® (English/Spanish) offers tips to employers and employees on improving workplace safety and health while working
in trenches.
- Compliance Officer Helps Protect Employees from Electrical Hazard
On April 17, while driving through a Chicago suburb, a compliance safety and health officer (CSHO) from OSHA's Chicago North area office observed employees at a construction site performing stucco work while atop metal scaffolding. The CSHO noticed that they were exposed to an electrical hazard and stopped to initiate an inspection. The CSHO discovered "hot" 120/240 secondary power lines were within two feet of the scaffolding and asked the crew's managers to remove the employees until the lines could be de-energized by the local power company. They agreed to voluntarily cease operation. Within four hours, the hazard was abated and the employees safely returned to work. OSHA's Supported Scaffold QuickCard® (English/Spanish) offers safety tips on working with scaffolding.
- Quick Action and Safety Harnesses Avert Falls
On Aug. 22, Compliance Safety and Health Officer Anthony Nozzi of OSHA's North Aurora, Ill., Area Office, while driving by a Chicago-area residential construction site, observed employees working at approximately 30 feet above grade performing roofing work. He stopped at the worksite and saw an employee trip on a slide guard and nearly fall off the roof -- the employee caught himself on the side of a chimney. Nozzi initiated an inspection and asked the employer to cease work until employees were provided adequate fall protection.
In an unrelated incident the next day, two Primasteelisa Company employees were 10 stories up inspecting the façade of a building in downtown Chicago when the motor to the scaffold they were working from stalled and caused it to tilt. The safety harnesses they wore kept them from falling. Within 30 minutes, the motor started working again, and the employees lowered themselves safely to the ground.
OSHA's Fall Protection Tips QuickCard (English/Spanish) can be downloaded from the agency's Web site on the QuickCards page, or obtained by calling the publications office at (202) 693-1888.
- Quick Action by OSHA Compliance Officer Protects Employees from Electrical Hazard
On Saturday, July 15, while driving through Prospect Heights, Ill., OSHA Compliance Safety and Health Officer Gary Weil of OSHA's Chicago North Area Office spotted three employees at a construction site performing masonry work from tubular-welded frame scaffolding. Weil saw they were exposed to fall hazards and stopped to initiate an inspection. He discovered a "hot" power line was within 12 inches of the scaffolding and asked the crew's foreman to remove the employees so the line could be de-energized by the local power company. The inspection stems from an OSHA local emphasis program targeting falls hazards in construction. OSHA Supported Scaffold QuickCard (English/Spanish) offers safety tips on working with scaffolding.
- Employees Removed from Excavation Site Minutes Before Collapse
OSHA's role in the life of the American worker was exhibited once again when, at 10 a.m. on the morning of June 6 in Brooklyn, N.Y., OSHA compliance safety and health officer Bob Stewart requested that six construction employees be removed from a 22-foot deep excavation due to the hazardous 10-ton concrete abutment hanging above it. Fifteen minutes later, the overhang collapsed and fell, landing in the exact spot in which the employees had been working. Stewart is a safety specialist assigned to OSHA's Manhattan Area Office in New York.
- Workers Removed From Construction Site Minutes Before Roof Collapse
Three workers were removed from a Cleveland-area construction project within minutes of a roof collapse on April 10 by OSHA Compliance Officer Joe Schwarz of OSHA's Cleveland Area Office and Medina County Building Inspector Art Verdoorn. In response to an anonymous complaint to both organizations, the men coincidentally made a surprise visit to the construction site of a preschool on Normandy Park Rd. The exterior walls were up and half the roof was on, but the structure was not braced properly. Some workers were on the high beams and some inside. The building inspector, with Schwarz's concurrence, issued a stop-work order, and ordered the workers removed just before the roof fell in and walls collapsed.
- Should one doubt the wisdom of using fall protection during construction, you might want to ask one fortunate construction worker from Michigan-based National Riggers and Erectors. Last September, while working at the Lambeau Field Renovation project in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the worker slipped from a steal beam - six stories above ground. Thanks to his use of full fall protection, serious injury - or death - was avoided. He was back at work shortly after his rescue. Less than two months later, a second worker slipped from a beam, but also escaped injury because of his fall protection equipment. Like his predecessor, he returned to work the same day. OSHA has a Strategic Partnership agreement with Turner Construction, the Lambeau Field general contractor, which requires 100 percent use of fall protection above six feet. Strict adherence to that requirement has saved two lives in the first year of the project. (Photos of the incident, taken by Turner Construction Safety Director Steve
Lafkas, are below.
- "Get out of that trench," OSHA Inspector Robert Dickinson ordered a worker in an unshored, unsloped, unsafe trench by the side of the road near El Paso, Texas. Good thing El Paso Assistant Area Director Mario Solano had spotted the trench earlier on September 13, 2001 and sent Dickinson and Elias Casillas to check it out. Because 30 seconds after the employee left the trench, the wall near where he had been standing collapsed. Heeding the compliance officer's warning and order to leave the trench kept the worker from experiencing a serious, perhaps life-threatening injury.
- While investigating the death of an aerial lift operator on September 11, 2001, OSHA inspector Rich LeVinus from the Concord, New Hampshire Area Office helped prevent another serious injury or fatality. An aerial lift had rolled off the side of a flat bed truck, catapulting the operator to the ground, resulting in his death. A tow truck operator was preparing to bring the lift upright, and LeVinus realized that doing so could cause the aerial lift to shift and possibly swing into the driver's side of the tow truck. He insisted that the tow truck driver use the passenger side controls to winch up the aerial lift, possibly saving the driver's life when the basket of the aerial lift did indeed strike the driver's side of the tow truck.
- Workers on a deteriorating floor at a building undergoing demolition in Chicago in July also appreciated OSHA's intervention. Following a complaint about the site, Calumet City's Vince Blakemore visited and found workers standing on deteriorating flooring, joists and support beams while demolishing the second level of the building. He told the owner to get workers off the rickety second story and find another method of demolition. The owner responded to Blakemore's concern and complied with OSHA's request immediately, moving the workers to the first level in another section of the building. Thank goodness, because the very next day the building collapsed-right where the workers had been.
- Following OSHA standards prevents tragedies every day. In Houston, on August 8, 2001, two window washers were suspended from the Baker Hughes building when their scaffold broke, leaving them dangling high above the ground. But they were hooked to the proper safety equipment and so they remained aloft until firefighters rescued them-a happy ending. Had they not followed OSHA's required safety procedures and tied off separately from the scaffold, they would likely have plunged to the earth with tragic results.
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