WORKER WAS
DELIVERING DRYWALL TO A NEARLY COMPLETED BUILDING WHEN A FALLING OBJECT (A TAPE
MEASURE) STRUCK AND KILLED HIM IN JERSEY CITY.
OSHA LAUNCHES PROBE INTO HIS DEATH.
Gary Anderson, 58, was delivering drywall to a nearly
completed building when a falling object struck and killed him.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) has launched an investigation into a November 3 worksite
accident. Anderson, an independent contractor from Somerdale, New Jersey, was
delivering wallboard to a 50-story apartment building under construction in
Jersey City, New Jersey when the accident occurred. Anderson was knocked
unconscious after a falling tape measure struck him, and he later died of his
injuries.
Shortly before 9:00 a.m., Anderson arrived at 70
Christopher Columbus Drive, which is near the Grove Street PATH station, and
emerged from his truck when a tape measure slipped off the tool belt of a
construction worker at the top of the structure. The tape measure plummeted 400
feet before bouncing off a piece of metal equipment and hitting Anderson in the
head. He was talking to an SPI employee when the tape measure struck him,
according to U.S. Department of Labor spokeswoman Leni Uddyback-Fortson.
Anderson was taken to Jersey City Medical Center, where
he died at 9:52 a.m. Work at the site was temporarily halted.
OSHA is investigating three companies involved in the
construction of the apartment building: Jangho Curtain Wall Company, which did
scaffolding work; Specialty Products & Insulation Company, which had the
contract to supply the project’s drywall; and AJD Construction, which is the
project’s general contractor.
The police report stated that Anderson was not wearing a
hardhat when the incident occurred, although he had one in his truck. AJD
Construction told investigators that company policy requires that all people on
on its worksite wear helmets. Shortly after the incident, a worker was seen
placing a sign with the helmet requirement advisory on it.
The belated attempt to post a declaration of company
policy on the use of hardhats does not negate a landowner’s or occupier’s duty
of reasonable care toward invitees. And
in the case of the construction site accident in Jersey City, the independent
contractor delivering drywall was clearly an invitee.
OSHA, whose probe of the Jersey City apartment building
accident began within two weeks of the incident, has six months to complete the
investigation.
According to the most recent OSHA statistics, there were
796 construction site fatalities in the United States in 2013. An object
striking a worker was deemed responsible for 82 of those fatalities, the second
leading cause of construction site deaths (behind the 294 workers who died as a
result of a fall).
While the tragic death of the independent contractor in
Jersey City appears, at first blush, to be a freak accident, construction site
fatalities of workers struck by an object are, unfortunately, not uncommon. And it is just one of several potential
causes of injury or death that construction workers are exposed to in their
line of work. That is why hard hats must
be worn at all times by everyone at construction sites. There is no exception to this
well-established rule.