Sunday, March 8, 2020

"A metallurgist died (this) afternoon...."


Some of our finished products can be hazardous if they unexpected move and a worker is between the product and a wall or fixed object. Here is a story from late last year emphasizing the importance of proper securement of rolls of aluminium.

A metallurgist died one afternoon during the last week of November 2019 after a work accident in a factory in South America.

The worker was working when he was hit by an aluminum coil weighing almost 2 tons that came loose and fell on him. Company employees provided the first assistance and removed the coil that was on top of the victim. An attempt to resuscitate with cardiac massage was even made before the arrival of local ems rescuers at the site. The worker suffered serious injuries which caused internal bleeding.

The man was taken to a local hospital where he ended up not resisting and died when he entered the hospital.

The causes of death of the machine operator will be the responsibility of the Civil Police, which will determine the responsibilities related to safety issues in the work environment as well as if there was any malpractice on the part of the worker at the time of the accident.

The body was collected and brought to his home town.

The deceased worker leaves his wife and a 13 year old teenage son.

We offer our sincere condolences to the deceased worker’s family, friends, and co-workers. We will reach out to the company and find out exactly what happened and update this post as more information comes available.

We sadly have previously posted fatalities involve coils of aluminium that fell off trucks, fell from cranes, fell from forklifts, etc. We have also posted incidents where the roll was in a cutter or machinery and the machinery moved pushing the coil.

Regardless, of how it happen the APSB urges that the movement of aluminium rolls be segregated from workers.

Lastly, we included some personnel information about the deceased worker that he was married and leaves a 13 year old son. We did that on purpose. We fear that omitting personal information sanitizes this posts. We want the reader to remember the incident and if their plant has aluminium coil to be safe around them.

Please comment.

1 comment:

Andy said...

Its important to remember that even moveable objects like cars and other vehicles are fixed points against which a person can be pinned by a load. Never move between a load and a fixed point against which you can conceivable be pinned.