General Construction Industry Accidents

Accident #1

A construction crew was in the process of forming a concrete slab. They were driving wooden stakes for wood forms into very hard clay. Workers were holding the wooden stakes against the form with their feet and using 8 pound sledge hammers to drive them into place. One worker had the stake break as he was hammering it, causing the hammer to come down onto his foot. One bone was fractured and another chipped, causing the worker to be in a walking cast for six weeks.

Review

1. Feet are not braces for holding stakes while driving them into the ground.

2. Due to the presence of hard clay, the spikes should have been metal rather than wood.

3. Was the worker wearing appropriate work boots (steel toe/shank)?

Accident #2

A crew was blowing dust from an area that had just been jack hammered. A dust cloud blew over the intersection adjacent to the work site and an auto accident occurred due to the sudden poor visibility. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Review

1. Workers are routinely aware of the hazards that motorists present to them. However, many times workers ignore threats imposed on the motorists by the workers.

2. Concrete dusts can contain silica, which can impair the function of the lung and cause a disease called silicosis. Concrete dusts should be wetted as possible to prevent exposures.

Accident #3

A construction worker was scraping the excess concrete off a piece of form lumber with a hammer. Several fragments entered one of his eyes requiring medical assessment. The job was interrupted and the employee had to be taken to the local hospital. Fortunately, the removal of the fragments was routine and no additional work time was lost.

Review

1. Any time that work operations include impact (i.e. hammering, chiseling, etc.) proper fitting eye protection needs to be worn.

Accident #4

A construction worker was digging in a ditch without gloves. He reached down to move some pipe and cut his hand on some glass that was buried in the excavation.

Review

1. Work gloves (cloth or leather) are appropriate for use when hand excavation is being performed. In addition to protecting against sharp objects like the glass in this example, gloves protect the hands form splinters (wood handled tools) and from blisters (wood and fiberglass handled tools).

Accident #5

Two workers were on a site tightening a roof drain. One of the workers was called away on an emergency. The remaining worker retained the tools that he felt would be required to complete the job. The company intended to dispatch a work truck to pick him up later that day. The worker later realized that he did not have all of the tools that he required and attempted to improvise by using a screw driver as a wedge. While he was leaning over the drain, the screw driver popped upward and lodged in the corner of his eye. He pulled the screw driver from his eye immediately. Because he was alone on the site and blinded by the blood in his eye, he had to jump from the roof and wait for someone to pass by and alert emergency services. By the time help arrived, his eye was swollen shut and filled with blood. While the injury in this case was not serious, delay in treatment could cause a relative minor injury to escalate into a more serious injury and the jump from the rooftop risked compounding the eye injury with injury related to the jump.

Review

1. Tools should only be used for their intended purpose.

2. Eye protection should be a primary consideration on any work site.

3. All workers should be provided with a reliable means for contacting help.

Accident #6

A construction worker was disassembling a hydraulic front end rack at a tire dealership. A backhoe was used to raise the rack off of the ground so that the belts that attached it to the hydraulic cylinders could be removed. While a worker was removing the belt assembly with a crescent wrench, the rack slipped off of the backhoe bucket, causing the wrench to pinch off the end of one of the workers fingers.

Review

1. Hazardous energy must be locked/tagged out prior to working on equipment. Using the backhoe to lift the rack so that a block could be placed underneath would be an appropriate procedure.

Accident #7

Two companies, an excavation company and an electrical contractor, were involved in work at a site. The electrician was working in an electrical room inside the building while excavation activities progressed immediately outside the building and adjacent to one of the electrical room walls. The excavation company foreman went in to alert the electrician that they were going to be performing some minor blasting and that there was no real danger, but it would be loud. The excavator then simultaneously detonated from six holes, each containing one and a half sticks of dynamite. Though uninjured, the blast knocked the electrician to the floor and caused cracks to the walls and floor of the electrical room.

Review

1. The operations of multiple contractors on a site need to be coordinated.

2. Blasting operations require that all nonessential personnel potentially affected by the blasting operations be evacuated from the potential impact zone.

When contractors work together, a level of trust (or mistrust) is achieved. When you are unfamiliar with the operations, competency, personnel, training, etc. of another contractor on a site, it is a good idea to confirm the scope of operations that have, at least at face value, the potential to cause harm rather than to place your trust in their ability to make decisions affecting your safety.

Accident #8

Three employees were applying a blacktop sealer to a driveway. The sealer, containing nearly 50% naphtha by weight, was viscous and not pouring well from the drum. One of the employees opened a valve at the top of the drum to allow the vapors to bleed off as he heated it with a propane torch to allow it to pour more easily. Another worker used a butane lighter to light his cigarette, causing the vapors exhausted from the drum to ignite and the drum to explode. The driveway, a truck and two of the employees were engulfed in flames. The employees each suffered second and third degree burns to about half of their bodies. The third worker suffered from only minor injuries.

Review

1. Smoking should not be allowed in the vicinity of any flammability/combustibility hazard. If employees must smoke, smoking should be allowed only in predesignated areas that are outside the potential zone of influence.

2. Workers need to be trained to recognize the hazards associated with heating a material above its flash point (and in the ability to read an MSDS and determine whether there is a flash point).

3. Procedures need to be developed to provide methods for appropriately handling situations that can be anticipated to occur on site (cool weather causing the sealer to pour slowly).

Accident #9

A worker was sawing concrete before breaking it out. He had only about six inches left to cut when the strap to his goggles broke and the goggles fell off. Because he had so little cutting left to do, the worker decided to finish cutting without goggles. A small piece of hot concrete flew up and hit the worker's eyelid. The eyelid was burned and the eye itself suffered some damage.

Review

1. This accident could also have been titled "Betting Against Murphy's Law". When a necessary piece of equipment (safety goggles) break, the equipment must be repaired or replaced prior to continuing operations without regard for how little work or time remains.

Accident #10

After climbing onto an excavator to give the operator instructions, a construction supervisor slipped while climbing down from the excavator. A protrusion caused his wedding ring to snag, tearing his ring finger off. He suffered a great deal of pain and missed some time from work, but the ring finger was reattached successfully with surgery.

Review

1. Supervisors must abide by all of the same workplace practices that they are there to enforce. Construction and factory workers routinely remove jewelry that can become caught on/in a piece of equipment. In this case, simply wearing work gloves might have been enough to prevent the accident.

Accident #11

A worker was hurriedly attempting to load his tools after completion of the days work. He had both hands full of tools, including a shovel as he walked to the truck. When he reached the truck, the shovel fell from his hand and landed blade side up next to him. An impatient motorist drove by, running the shovel blade over with his tire. Since the blade was up, it acted as the fulcrum of as lever causing the handle of the shovel to rise up between the worker's legs with a great deal of force. The handle struck his leg (whew! Close call!), resulting in a significant bruise.

Review

1. Haste makes waste. The worker was putting himself at risk over saving a few seconds.

2. The work area needs to be appropriately protected from vehicular traffic.

3. Shovels must always be placed blade-side down when on the ground.

Accident #12

Two workers had broken out a concrete island. While the backhoe was picking up the concrete pieces, one of the workers backed away a tripped. He fell onto exposed rebar at the edge of the work area, resulting in a painful puncture injury that caused him to lose two weeks from work.

Review

1. It is never a good idea to walk backwards across a construction site.

2. Rebar caps can be placed on protruding rebar to minimize hazards.

3. This incident exemplifies the need for a blood borne pathogen program (elimination of sharps, cleaning up spilled body fluids like blood).

Accident #13

A mechanical worker took a break from his work in one area of a worksite. During his break, he walked onto another part of the worksite where his company was performing carpentry. He was not paying attention to where he was walking and stepped onto a board that had a nail protruding upward. The nail penetrated his shoe and went into the bone of his foot. Because he ignored the injury, the delay in medical care resulted in severe infection and extensive surgery was required to repair the damage. He was hospitalized for 11 days and lost an additional 10 weeks from work.

Review

1. Scrap lumber needs to have protruding nails removed or turned in.

2. Shoes worn in the vicinity of demolition operations need to be capable of protecting the foot from puncture wounds.

3. Injuries must be promptly reported and treated.

Accident #14

A plumber was attempting to warm a confined space in which he intended to work. He placed his lighted cutting torch in the vaulted area and closed the opening. When he returned to the vault, he noticed that the torch was no longer lit and, after entering the vault, attempted to relight the torch. The torch had used up the available oxygen in the space, causing it to extinguish, and filled the space with acetylene. When the plumber reopened the space, oxygen was again introduced and the ignition caused the acetylene vapors to ignite. The plumber was blown out the opening and burned over 65% of his body. He died about a week later.

Review

1. Tools are only to be used for their intended purpose.

2. Cutting and welding are hot work operations that require a fire watch to be present.

3. Cutting and welding operations can emit toxic vapors into the air and require exhaust ventilation, at minimum.

4. The vault was a confined space and all of the requirements of a confined space program should have been implemented (monitoring, ventilation, personnel, training, etc.).