OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #221606882
KINGS FLC, INC.
KETTLEMAN CITY, CA—
Event description
Employee dies when crushed by farm equipment augers
Investigation abstract
At 3:00 p.m. on October 12, 2023, an employee working as a farm laborer for a to the gondola blocking the view. The cart filled and the coworker began backing up to leave just as a boot flew out of the gondola. the coworker then heard the employee screaming and ran over and to turn off the gondola. The coworker discovered the employee had been pulled into the gondola augers and was unresponsive. The employee reached into the gondola when the machine was unguarded and contacted the augers while they were in operation. The coworker called 911 and the County Sherriff's Department, Fire Department and EMS responded. EMS declared the employee dead at the scene. The employee sustained contusions, lacerations and abrasions to the scalp, chest, abdomen, back, and upper and lower extremities. Also, the employee's nose, right forearm, right farm staffing company was working as a seasonal employee on a client site. The hand, left forearm, left leg and lower right leg were fractured. The County Coroner autopsy report stated that the employee sustained multiple lacerations of the scalp, underlying skull fractures and injuries to the brain. employee had been hired one month prior to the incident. The employee was operating a COE receiver, and a coworker was operating a cart collection equipment. The purpose of the cart is to collect the pistachios when the gondola is full. The gondola empties into the cart and when full, and the coworker drives the cart to be loaded into a truck. The coworker was in the operator's seat on the west side of the gondola where the employee was located parked. The coworker did not have a clear view of the employee from the operator's seat due
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 22 M
- Event type
- 2
- Occupation code
- 889
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.