5-alarm fire at 316 E 194 St. in the Fordham section of the Bronx destroys several businesses. The fire is now under control.

5-alarm fire destroys 7 businesses in Fordham, Bronx


FORDHAM, Bronx (WABC) -- 

A five-alarm fire is burning through a row of stores in the Fordham section of the Bronx

The fire broke out on East 194th Street just after 5:30 a.m. Tuesday. 250 firefighters responded to the scene to fight the massive blaze.

Aerial ladders helped knock down a lot of the visible flames around 6:15 a.m. The fire is not yet under control.

The fire appears to be affecting a Laundromat, pizza shop, and a grocery store among others.

So far, no injuries are reported.

Cal/OSHA investigating a recent incident at the Tesla automaker’s factory in Fremont that left a worker hospitalized with a broken jaw

Tesla is already under scrutiny because of its uncertain financial outlook, troubles producing a new model and safety questions about its driver-assistance technology.

Now it is coming under fire on a new front: workplace injuries.

California’s job safety watchdog said Friday that it was investigating a recent incident at the automaker’s factory in Fremont that left a worker hospitalized with a broken jaw.

It said the man, a 30-year-old millwright employed by a subcontractor, had been hit by a skid carrier, a piece of equipment used to move a vehicle through the assembly process.

The state agency, Division of Occupational Safety and Health, has six months to issue citations for any violations of workplace safety regulations.

The incident, which occurred April 9, was first reported by Bloomberg and was confirmed by the agency in an email.

 
Earlier this week, a nonprofit news organization, the Center for Investigative Reporting, cataloged a series of injuries suffered by Tesla factory workers. They included back strain, repetitive-stress injuries and severe headaches that one worker attributed to fumes from an adhesive. The article said that Tesla’s injury rate exceeded the industry average in 2016 and that the company had chosen not to report certain incidents as required under California labor law.

In a blog post, Tesla said the article had incorrectly counted some injuries that actually occurred away from the car plant and had relied on “outright inaccurate information.”

The Division of Occupational Safety and Health said Friday that it had opened a second inquiry involving Tesla but would not specify the nature, saying no information could be released until the case was closed.

Tesla issued a statement saying it took any injury “very seriously” and pledged full cooperation with the state agency. “Nothing is more important to us than the safety and well-being of those who work at Tesla every day,” it said.

Our columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin and his Times colleagues help you make sense of major business and policy headlines — and the power-brokers who shape them.

The company also sought to distance itself from the April 9 incident, saying the injured worker was not under its supervision.

“This injury involved a worker who had been hired by an independent contractor and was performing a procedure that had been developed by and was under the supervision of that contractor,” Tesla said. “This contractor was also responsible for reporting the injury, which they did.”

David Michaels, who led the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under President Barack Obama and is now a faculty member at George Washington University, said the reports of injuries at Tesla were worth investigating.

“If you have injuries, it means the manufacturing system is not working the way it’s supposed to, or is not well designed,” he said. “Injuries mean things aren’t working the way they’re supposed to.”

Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, has acknowledged that the company has struggled to work the kinks out of its assembly line as it gears up its first mass-market offering, the Model 3. He has described the debugging process as “production hell” and said recently that he was sleeping at the factory.

Hailed only a year ago as a rising force in the auto industry, Tesla has traveled a bumpy road over the last several weeks. The company is counting on the Model 3 to increase revenue and pare its quarterly losses. Concerns over glitches in its manufacturing process recently prompted Moody’s Investors Service to downgrade Tesla’s credit rating and warn that the company could face a cash crunch later in the year.

A federal safety agency is investigating a March 23 crash in which a California man died when his Tesla Model X sport-utility vehicle slammed into a concrete barrier on a highway near San Francisco. The accident happened with the Autopilot driver-assistance system engaged.



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California regulators are investigating an incident at Tesla’s factory in the state that involved a subcontractor who broke his jaw after getting struck by a piece of factory equipment. It’s the second probe announced by the state this month, and came just days before Tesla vigorously defended its safety record.


California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health was told of the incident sustained by a 30-year-old man at Tesla’s plant in the city of Fremont, and began an investigation on April 12, reports Bloomberg. This came days before Tesla labeled a news outlet an “extremist organization” for reporting the automaker underreported serious injuries on legally mandated forms to boost its safety record.

The worker was hospitalized, Bloomberg reported. A spokesperson for California’s industrial relations department told the news outlet the man “was struck by a skid carrier and was transported to the San Jose Regional Hospital with a broken jaw and laceration to the face.” The unnamed man was employed by a Missouri-based subcontractor called Automatic Systems Inc.

A spokesperson for the industrial relations department immediately responded to a request for comment.

Tesla sent along the following statement:


Nothing is more important to us than the safety and well-being of those who work at Tesla every day. This injury involved a worker who had been hired by an independent contractor and was performing a procedure that had been developed by and was under the supervision of that contractor. This contractor was also responsible for reporting the injury, which they did. We take any injury very seriously, and we’ll of course provide our full cooperation to Cal-OSHA. Last year alone, while Tesla’s vehicle production increased 20%, both our rate of injuries and the average severity of injuries declined significantly – and we’re working hard to reduce that even more.

Because Cal/OSHA is resource-restrained, it stands out that the agency has launched two inspections into Tesla now, Berkowitz, a former federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration chief of staff, told Bloomberg.

“OSHA isn’t like your local county health department that inspects every restaurant every year,” she told the news outlet. “It would take OSHA 150 years to investigate every workplace under their jurisdiction just once” and “most companies don’t see OSHA in their whole lifetime.”

How best to promote musculoskeletal health and reduce the incidence of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among surface stone, sand, and gravel mine workers.

Figure 1: Surface miner places bags on pallets.

Figure 3: Surface miner reaches overhead to fuel machinery.

Musculoskeletal Health Research to Benefit Surface Stone, Sand, and Gravel Miners

Posted on April 23, 2018 by Emily Warner, MA; Jonisha Pollard, MS, CPE; Valerie Coughanour, MA, MFA; and Jack Lu, PhD, CPE

In October 2017, the NIOSH Musculoskeletal Health Cross-Sector Program published the first blog post in a series to highlight musculoskeletal health research at NIOSH. This post—the fifth installment in the series—will discuss how best to promote musculoskeletal health and reduce the incidence of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among surface stone, sand, and gravel mine workers.

As of 2015, 80% of active surface mining operations were extracting stone, sand, and gravel. A majority of job-related tasks in surface mining require workers to maintain awkward postures, perform repetitive movements, and operate vibrating machinery. Surface mine workers often develop musculoskeletal injuries in the back, fingers, knees, and shoulders¹. 

According to the NIOSH Mining Program, 39% of nonfatal lost-time injuries between 2011 and 2015 involved handling materials, with sprains and strains being the most frequently reported injury². Handling materials during loading and unloading or machine maintenance and repair is a frequent cause of musculoskeletal disorders among surface mine workers in minerals processing plants⁴.

In many cases, the contributing factors for MSDs in stone, sand, and gravel operations are largely preventable through workplace design, usage of correct tools, proper housekeeping, and equipment modifications. NIOSH has conducted research and developed tools to help mine workers identify and remediate risk factors. Examples of some of that research follows.

NIOSH Resources (chronologically listed by publication date)

Mining Publication: Simple Solutions for Surface Mine Workers  This booklet provides examples of solutions and task design ideas you can use to reduce risks for MSDs and slips, trips, and falls.
Mining Product: ErgoMine  ErgoMine is an ergonomics audit tool designed specifically for mining. It includes audits for bagging, haul truck, and maintenance and repair operations at surface mining and processing facilities.
Ergonomics Processes: Implementation Guide and Tools for the Mining Industry  This document helps mining companies establish ergonomics processes and programs at their mine site. It includes training for management and miners, as well as implementation tools that can be used to prioritize tasks for redesign, survey mine workers for current musculoskeletal discomfort, and determine the impact of improvements through before-and-after comparisons.
Mining Product: Ergonomics and Risk Factor Awareness Training for Miners  The training is designed specifically for the mining industry to increase miners’ awareness of risk factors and encourage miners to take action to report and reduce their exposures to risk factors. It includes everything needed to provide ergonomics training at a mine site.

Recent Research Initiatives

The NIOSH Mining Program’s recent and current research is focused on providing tools to help miners identify risk factors and implement ergonomics interventions.  Products designed to prevent MSDs in mining include user-friendly software and a wide variety of training resources.³ One research product aims to evaluate the appropriateness of using a mobile app to determine mobile equipment operators’ whole-body vibration exposure. By looking at publicly available MSD data and conducting mine site visits, NIOSH researchers and other occupational health professionals strive not only to reduce MSDs but to better understand human-machine interactions amidst the changing nature of mining work environments.
Add a comment below about how you have used NIOSH musculoskeletal health research to promote health and safety in the field of mining. Have a question or other comment? We’d love to hear it.

Emily Warner, MA, is an ORISE Fellow in the NIOSH Division of Applied Research and Technology.
Jonisha Pollard, MS, CPE, is the Team Leader of the Musculoskeletal Disorders Prevention Team in the NIOSH Mining Program.
Valerie Coughanour, MA, MFA, is a Health Communication Specialist in the NIOSH Mining Program.
Jack Lu, PhD, CPE, is a Research Ergonomist in the NIOSH Division of Applied Research and Technology and Manager of the NIOSH Musculoskeletal Health Cross-Sector Program.

Missed the first four blog installments in the Musculoskeletal Health Research at NIOSH series? Read them here:

• Blog Series to Highlight Musculoskeletal Health Research at NIOSH
• Musculoskeletal Health Research to Benefit Temporary Retail Workers
• Musculoskeletal Health Research to Benefit Couriers, Messengers, and Baggage Handlers
• Musculoskeletal Health Research to Benefit Construction Workers

References

1. National Institute for Workplace Safety and Health. Mining: Mining Facts- 2015. Updated August 8, 2017.
2. National Institute for Workplace Safety and Health. Mining: Data & Statistics. Updated May 22, 2017.
3. National Institute for Workplace Safety and Health. Mining Program. Updated June 2, 2017.
4. NIOSH. Mining: Identification of Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders. Updated June 12, 2016.