rescue of confined space accident turns to recovery.....

Frequency and long term exposure to any hazard may lead to complacency. One example would be the pits that some of our employees work around during their day. From maintenance pits under furnaces, pits under machinery to casting and maintenance pits for direct chill casting operations. This hazard of pits can have severe consequences if our workers fail to acknowledge this hazard. Here is a recent incident involving the hazard of pits in our plants.

A man is dead after falling 20 feet into a pit at a manufacturing plant early one morning during the week of November 5, 2017, according to the local fire department.

Local firefighters responded to the aluminum manufacturing plant for a confined space rescue.

"We got the call around 6 a.m. this morning, for a confined space rescue," said a spokesperson with the fire department . "We had multiple fire and special units from (omitted) and (omitted) respond."

Fire crews including hazmat and technical rescue specialist initially were working to rescue the man who fell 20 feet into a pit.

However, units on scene switched from a rescue operation to a recovery operation when they discovered the man had passed.

"We need to make sure the scene is safe, it is somewhere that we can work in at this point so we can adequately perform the recovery," said the fire deparment spokesperson.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog offers our sincere condolences to the deceased worker’s family, friends, and coworkers. We are at a loss of words on what to say after every fatal incident. Regardless we pray and weep for the dead and hope that in some way this incident can be used to prevent others.

The aluminium company released information that the worker was a company employee. It matters little to us whether the deceased worker was an employee or not. But, this incident is a little more personal to us because we probably met and spoken to the deceased worker.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has posted incidents involving injuries and fatalities with workers falling into pits. We pray that this incident will be used around the world for a toolbox talk illustrating the hazard of working near pits. It is unknown from the news media article on what the worker was doing. All pits should have guarding to protect workers from accidentally falling into them. Due to the variety of pits and dimensions no two pit guards are the same.

The Aluminium Association’s Casthouse Safety Workshop discusses the topic of pit guarding. Including numerous photos of examples.

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