OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14481972
WEIRTON STEEL CORP
WEIRTON, WV—
Event description
Employee Fell into Bin and Suffocated
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 and another employee were working inside a railroad hopper car locat The job safety analyses and standard operating procedures require employees to w ear safety harnesses and a line with a hook attached. The line was to be secured to the top side of the hopper car. ed over a stockhouse bin. The bin was 20 feet deep. Employee #1 was on the north end and his partner was in the center. The employees were working in the rail h opper cars to dislodge BS scrap ore stuck around the 26-in. by 36-in. hopper doo rs at the bottom of the car. Employee #1 fell through one of the hopper doors an d into the stockhouse bin. His falling went unnoticed. BS scrap material continu ed to be unloaded. The employee, who suffocated, had been buried under 2 feet of material. The job safety analyses and safe operating procedures the company had written for employees performing such duties in hopper cars were not followed.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 37 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 11
- Source
- 27
- Occupation code
- 887
- Human factor
- 4
- 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.