OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14447981
BLUE EARTH EXCAVATION INC
ROCHESTER, MN—
Event description
Employee drowns after falling into elevator pit
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was removing iron T-rails from the south elevator shaft of a 9-story at approximately 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. but could not find him. Coworkers then began to look throughout the building, but without success. Hospital security pe rsonnel joined in the search, and around midnight, the superintendent and cowork ers entered the sub-basement near the south elevator pit. A lifeline was danglin g down the shaft into the 26 in. of water that had accumulated in the bottom of the pit from watering during the demolition process. When the searchers pulled o n the lifeline, Employee #1 rose to the surface of the water. The coroner report ed he had drowned. It appears that Employee #1 had been knocked out after fallin g approximately 35 ft from the underside of the elevator car where the compensat ing chains were being moved. There were no witnesses. Employee #1's time of deat building that was being demolished. He wished to use these rails to construct a h was placed at 5:00 p.m. homemade sawmill on his farm. Employee #1 was very fussy about the condition of the rails, and all bolts, nuts, and washers were saved. At the time of the acci dent, Employee #1 had been working sporadically in this shaft for two days. A co worker, a former Marine Corps instructor, had shown him how to use a rappelling belt the previous week, and a coworker had helped Employee #1 remove some rails from the shaft the day before. On the day of the accident, Employee #1's girlfri end, with whom he had a date that evening, had visited the site looking for him
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 45 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 41
- Occupation code
- 558
- Human factor
- 9
- Environmental factor
- 13
- 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.