Elevator Service Technician Dies After Being Crushed by an Elevator Counter-Weight in California

Details

• Corporate Authors:
  California Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation Program (CA/FACE) ; California. Department of Health Services
• Description:
  A 42-year-old, white, non-Hispanic, male elevator service technician (the victim) died after being crushed by an elevator counterweight while at work. The victim was an employee of an elevator repair company and was doing general maintenance contract work for a hotel. He was working alone at the time of the incident. The service dispatcher at his company had tried to reach him (via his pager) on several occasions earlier on the afternoon of the incident. When the dispatcher was unable to reach the victim, another service technician (co-worker) was sent to the hotel to find him. The co-worker met with the hotel's chief engineer and together they looked in the area where the victim had last been seen working. The victim was found in an elevator lying over counterweights and pinned between spreader beams on the second floor of the hotel. The victim may have been using the spreader beam between car #1 and #2 as a workstation. The co-worker stated that the victim was obviously already deceased. The hotel engineer called 911 and police and paramedics arrived a short time later. The CA/FACE investigator concluded that, in order to prevent similar future occurrences, employers should: 1. require rigid screens or walls between adjacent hoistways with side-mounted counterweights
  
  and 2. have signs posted between the elevator spreader beams stating that caution should be taken due to the position of the counterweights.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Accident Prevention Accidents Accidents, Occupational Maintenance Occupational Exposure Occupational Health Safety Safety Management Workplace
• Keywords:
  Accident-analysis Accident-prevention Injuries Injury-prevention Maintenance-workers Occupational-hazards OSHA Region 9 Safety-education Safety-equipment Safety-measures Safety-monitoring Safety-programs Traumatic-injuries Work-analysis Work-areas Work-operations Work-performance Work-practices

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• FACE - NIOSH and State:
  FACE
• Series:
  Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation Reports (FACE)
• Subseries:
  State
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.26616/NIOSHSFACE93CA010
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement
• Genre:
  Field Study
• Place as Subject:
  California ; OSHA Region 9
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  5 pdf pages
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20026994
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB2008-100133
• Citation:
  Morgantown, WV: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, FACE 93CA010, 1994 Apr ; :1-5
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1994
• Performing Organization:
  California Department of Health Services
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• NAICS and SIC Codes:
  23 - Construction - (NAICS)
• Start Date:
  1991/09/30
• End Date:
  2006/08/31
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:5623aa9f8447555884ddc4974e86b71223e7d2d6ee58c0c1570387d798d6c505b93ba48570f59def19f2386c9b204eeb58bba39450f9fd79eb06ba930b616ff4
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/169045/cdc_169045_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 25.16 KB ]