Saturday, February 28, 2015

LABORER KILLED AFTER BEING STRUCK BY A SLAB OF CONCRETE THAT HAD BEEN LIFTED USING A SKID-STEER LOADER









A 19-year-old male Hispanic laborer was killed after a 58x48x 5-inch, 1,200-pound slab of concrete struck his head.  The incident occurred at a residential, northern NJ neighborhood sidewalk. 

The victim had worked for this small landscaping and construction company for approximately two weeks.  The company had verbal on-the-­job training only.

On the day of the incident, a four-member crew was attempting to re-grade the ground beneath a concrete sidewalk.  In order to lift a slab, the four-worker crew would pry it up slightly (using a pry bar) and place large stones underneath to hold it in place. The crew would then connect a 40-foot-long chain to the bucket hook of a skid-steer loader and wrap the other end around the slab, connecting it to itself with a 2” pelican hook. 

The chained slab would then be lifted via the skid-steer loader and moved away, allowing the ground underneath the slab to be properly graded.

The chained slab was then placed on the ground and the crew began to re-grade the soil.  When finished, the slab was being walked back into place by the victim and lowered. 

During this time, for an unknown reason the victim knelt down, perhaps to fix part of the re-grade, and asked the skid-steer operator to raise the slab back up. As the slab was lifted, it swung and hit him in the head. The victim sustained blunt force trauma injuries, including a fractured skull. The victim died minutes after the injury. 

A crewman called 9-1-1 and the police arrived on the scene immediately.

Contributing Factors

1.   No personal protective equipment
2.   Training/work practices
3.   Unsecured suspended load

Investigators recommend that these safety guidelines be followed to prevent similar incidents: 

1.   Utilize an alternative method of moving concrete slabs when attempting to re-grade ground underneath
2.   Workers should be provided and wear appropriate personal protective equipment at all times.
3.   A safety and health plan based on a job hazard analysis should be developed by the employer and followed where workers are assigned tasks.

REFERENCES
1.   Concrete Construction: Nominal Weight of Standard Concrete. Available at:  http://www.concreteconstruction.net/concrete-articles/nominal-weight-of-standard-concrete.aspx. Accessed September, 2013
2.   How to Repair Sidewalks. Available at:  http://www.oregonohio.org/Sidewalks/how-to-repair­sidewalks.html. Accessed, August, 2013.
3.   Sidewalk Leveling. Available at: http://www.heightslibrary.org/materials/hrrc/11­Asphalt_Concrete/CONCRETE/SIDEWALK_LEVELING.pdf. Accessed, August, 2013
4.   Leveling a sidewalk slab [modified]. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/19/nyregion/home-clinic-leveling-a-sidewalk-slab.html. Accessed, August 2013.
5.   Job Hazard Analysis. US Department of Labor Publication # OSHA-3071, 1998 (revised). USDOL, OSHA Publications, PO Box 37535, Washington DC 20013-7535