Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025
105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #221525462

RAFAEL BARAJAS

Event
Agriculture, Farm, Farm worker, Heat, Heat index, Heat-related illness, Migrant Farm Worker, Unresponsive
NAICS
115115
Inspection type
Federal Agency
Activity number
#346415516
Employer profile
RAFAEL BARAJAS
Summary number
221525462
Report ID
0418800

Event description

Employee is killed due to heat illness while farming

Investigation abstract

At 3:15 p.m. on January 1, 2023, an employee, a migrant farm worker, was placing wooden stakes in the ground to support bell pepper plants at a farm. The employee was on his first day on the job and he was struggling to keep pace with more experienced farmworkers. The employee complained of fatigue and leg pain as the area's heat index neared 90 degrees. Sometime later, coworkers found the employee unresponsive in a shallow drainage ditch. The employee died due to symptoms related to heat illness.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 28 M

    Event type
    14

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.