Two Workers (a carpenter and a laborer) Electrocuted in South Carolina

Details

• Corporate Authors:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Description:
  Several workers were moving scaffolding when it contacted a 13,750 volt overhead power line, killing two of the workers and injuring five others. The victims worked for a general contractor with no written safety policy or established safety program. On the job training was provided, and safety was viewed as a matter of common sense. Each section of the metal scaffolding was 4 feet wide and 7 feet long. The total height of the scaffolding was 31 feet. The men were painting a 33 foot high sign when they were asked to move the scaffold away so that concrete access road could be poured. A 13,750 volt line was 27 feet from the ground, 10 feet distant from one of the scaffolds. The newly constructed concrete access road was 4 to 6 inches higher than ground level, requiring the workers to pick up the scaffolding to begin to move it back into place. The top section of scaffolding uplifted, toppled over, and contacted the power line. The electricity knocked all seven workers away. A carpenter and a laborer received fatal electrical burns
  
  the other five workers were hospitalized with electrical burns. It is recommended that scaffolding should not be moved unless all safety hazards have been identified and addressed. Locking pins should be used to secure panels of scaffolding together. A written safety program should be developed and implemented by this employer. Sufficient time should be allocated to a job to complete it without taking any risks.
  
  
• Content Notes:
  Publication date provided by the authoring office. There is no publication date indicated on the resource.
• Subjects:
  Accident Prevention Accidents Accidents, Occupational Construction Industry Electric Injuries Electricity Occupational Health Paint Safety
• Keywords:
  Accident-analysis Accident-prevention Construction-Search Construction-workers Electric-power-transmission-lines Electrical-shock FACE-87-48 OSHA Region 4 Painters Safety-practices
• FACE - NIOSH and State:
  FACE ; Construction ; Electrocution
• Series:
  Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation Reports (FACE)
• Subseries:
  NIOSH (In-House)
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.26616/NIOSHFACE8748
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Field Study
• Place as Subject:
  South Carolina ; OSHA Region 4
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSR - Division of Safety Research
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  3 pages
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:00177516
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB88-190244
• Citation:
  Morgantown, WV: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, FACE 87-48, 1987 Jul ; :1-4
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1987
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• NAICS and SIC Codes:
  23 - Construction - (NAICS)
• Start Date:
  1987/06/05
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:b3e8db407488ef71cf2969075be31bdacf4ce69affd7a4c3241706a869ea6e8fe36ba6e102f440e8be3ae081325827a371bd336fff28c118bcb25997b51f99bf
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/164547/cdc_164547_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 225.26 KB ]