"he fell about 25 to 30 feet into a pit while performing maintenance..."

One mistake may either injure or kill you and/or your coworkers. 

When we have the opportunity to speak to workers we always talk about the importance of following your training. A failure to follow your training can and will result in something bad happening to you and/or your coworkers. We acknowledge the previous statement is blunt, and to the point. But, as we have seen over the years, it rings true. The following story will be talked about in plant meetings throughout our industry. Not because of the sadness of associated with a worker being killed. But, by the fact that is again a maintenance worker who died.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog editors are invited to visit dozens of plants and speak to the workers about safety. On our site visits we request the opportunity to speak to the maintenance workers separately. Why? Because in our opinion more maintenance workers are injured and killed in our industry on a yearly basis than any other position in our plants. Maintenance workers on a daily basis have the opportunity to encounter more hazards than regular shop floor workers. On occasion a maintenance worker will forget his training, or take a shortcut and be killed. We have found that the impact of our presentations to the maintenance workers is impactful to the attendees. We pray that we can reach at least one worker to realize that making one mistake, taking a shortcut, forgetting their training will leave their household with pain and sorrow.

According to the local County Sheriff, the accident occurred one afternoon during the week of January 31, 2016. Initial reports indicate that the worker was performing maintenance work and troubleshooting an overhead crane around 1 p.m. when he fell 10 meters into a pit below, suffering fatal injuries.

The employee was pronounced dead at the scene by the local county coroner.

Three fire departments asisted at the scene, along with an air ambulance.

An investigator from the local office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is at the automotive aluminium casting factory today and may be there for several days.

"We have up to six months to complete our investigation and release any citations that are warranted," said spokesperson with OSHA. "Our condolences go out to the family and friends of the deceased and the company and his co-workers. This is a very tragic event and our condolences go out to those folks.”

We offer our prayers to the deceased worker’s family, friends, and coworkers. We pray that this incident will reinforce the importance of properly wearing safety harnesses.

Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) has useful educational information about fall protection. It can be found here.

Youtube is another great resource to companies looking for short safety videos that they can be shown to their workers. Here is one that we quickly found.

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