The total fine is $75,000.

On Feb. 24, the whale, Tilikum, dragged trainer Dawn Brancheau under the water by grabbing her ponytail in front of about 50 spectators.

The autopsy report said Brancheau’s death was due to drowning and traumatic injuries.

OSHA says its investigation showed SeaWorld trainers had an extensive history of unexpected and potentially dangerous incidents involving killer whales at its various locations, including the one in Orlando.

The agency proposes that trainers not have physical contact with Tilikum unless they’re protected by a physical barrier.

OSHA issued:

• one willful citation for exposing employees to struck-by and drowning hazards when interacting with killer whales ($70,000)
• one serious citation for exposing employees to a fall hazard by failing to install a stairway railing system on a stage ($5,000), and
• one other-than-serious violation for failing to equip outdoor electrical receptacles in the stadium with weatherproof enclosures (no monetary penalty).

SeaWorld is contesting the citations and fines. In a statement, SeaWorld said it “disagrees with the unfounded allegations made by OSHA. OSHA’s allegations in this citation are unsupported by any evidence or precedent and reflect a fundamental lack of understanding of the safety requirements associated with marine mammal care.”

SeaWorld says it has conducted its own investigation into the fatality and has made changes to its safety program for the trainers who work with the whales.

What do you think? Should SeaWorld face an OSHA fine for the death of the trainer? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Two workers at Birdsong Peanuts in Suffolk, VA, were checking on the level of peanuts when one fell into the 50-foot tall storage tank.

A co-worker got a line to the fallen worker. When local firefighters arrived, the employee was submerged 15 feet under the nuts.

The firefighters got a self-contained breathing apparatus to the man. They were concerned he would suffocate because vibrations from passing trucks threatened to shake the contents of the tank.

The unidentified worker was connected to another line and lifted out of the silo. He was able to climb down a ladder on his own and refused further treatment.

No word on whether OSHA will investigate this incident.

OSHA recently fined a Wisconsin grain cooperative $721,000 after a worker was engulfed in frozen soybeans. The employee survived after being trapped for four hours.

In a letter to grain storage operators, OSHA said companies must follow the regulations in the Grain Handling Facilities standard, 1910.272.

OSHA thought so. It issued Paramount Advanced Wireless a $7,000 fine in the death of Gerry LeClercq for one serious violation: “Employees were working on a communication tower 60 feet above the ground without any fall protection.”

Paramount appealed the fine to an administrative law judge, arguing that the fatal fall was an unforeseeable incident of employee misconduct.

A company can use unpreventable employee misconduct as a defense if it can show it had a thorough safety program which was adequately communicated and enforced and that the employee conduct was a departure from an enforced safety rule.

The record showed Paramount had:

• a well-communicated, comprehensive and properly enforced safety program that required employees to be tied off at all times on towers
• an extensive written safety policy based on industry experience and standards set by national organizations
• required that each crew member take a written test on proper climbing
• required 100% fall protection for employees
• a progressive disciplinary policy (verbal warning, written warning, suspension, termination), and
• disciplined and terminated employees for safety violations.

The record also showed that, on the day of the fatality, the foreman on duty had filled out all necessary safety paperwork required by the company’s policy and that it was signed by all employees who were on the site.

The employees were also properly supervised on the day of the incident.

For all those reasons, the judge found Paramount showed that the fatality was an unforeseeable event caused by the actions of the employee who unhooked himself from his fall protection. The citation and fine were thrown out.

(Secretary of Labor v. Paramount Advanced Wireless, Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, No. 09-0178, 6/21/10.) You can read the judge’s decision here.

Police say Bruce Florence was working in the outdoor garden center at a Wal-Mart near Ft. Worth, TX, when customer William Kennedy tried walking out with a 26-inch TV he hadn’t paid for.

When Florence stepped in front of Kennedy, telling him electronics weren’t allowed in the garden center, Kennedy allegedly pushed Florence to the ground. Police say Kennedy fled in an SUV with a driver waiting inside.

Doctors say Florence suffered a head injury — bleeding in the brain — as a result of the fall.

He died six days later in the hospital.

Kennedy has been jailed on charges of theft at several stores.

Police say he could be charged with murder if the medical examiner determines that Florence died from the head injuries he suffered in the incident.

… the judge presiding over a lawsuit he’d filed in connection with the alleged incident.

Steven Harder of Woodland, CA, claimed he’d fallen from an excavator on May 5, 2004, causing a severe brain injury. But authorities say he was actually injured in a non-work auto crash.

Harder said he became very sensitive to light and his overall vision was poor.

He was awarded workers’ comp benefits and collected $414,171 from State Fund Insurance.

He also sued the manufacturer of the excavator. That lawsuit was settled for $20,000.

But Harder’s alleged fraud was uncovered during the lawsuit against the excavator manufacturer. Harder had shown up for court using a wheelchair. At a lunch recess, the judge witnessed Harder walking to a restroom with a normal gait, without using the wheelchair or any other device.

An investigation followed. Undercover video was obtained of Harder showing him wearing a wet suit and engaging in mining activities.

Harder turned himself in. He faces one felony count of knowingly making a false or fraudulent material statement or material misrepresentation for the purpose of obtaining compensation. If convicted, he could receive up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine.

Jabin Lakes, a maintenance worker for the City of Middletown, was found dead at the bottom of a manhole. He’d opened the cover to do a routine visual check of sewer lines.

Lakes hadn’t gone below ground. Authorities believe he lost consciousness and fell in.

An autopsy may determine whether Lakes died of exposure to the fumes or from his fall.

One firefighter was lowered into the hole by a rope and was quickly overcome by the same fumes. Two other firefighters standing outside the hole also began to have difficulty breathing.

The firefighters weren’t using breathing apparatus because they thought they were responding to a fall.

The firefighter who was lowered into the hole remains in a hospital intensive care unit. Another firefighter is hospitalized in fair condition, and the third was treated and released.

Initial tests indicate the fumes might have been nitrogen. Further tests will determine what the fumes were.

The manhole is in front of an Air Products and Chemicals facility that supplies oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen to AK Steel’s Middletown Works. Authorities say they can’t rule out that Air Products was the source of the fumes.

Since the incident involved public employees, OSHA won’t investigate.

OSHA cited Birdair, Inc., of Amherst, NY, for the incident in which two workers slid about 260 feet down the side of the domed roof. One of the workers suffered head and chest trauma and a broken leg. The other hurt his back.

Birdair faces $45,000 in fines for:

• one willful violation for employees not wearing the correct fall protection equipment, and
• one serious violation for workers not trained about hazards associated with falls.

Birdair says it will contest the citations.

An OSHA spokeswoman told the Star-Telegram that the workers were wearing fall protection gear, but it wasn’t tied off in accordance with OSHA standards.

The injured men were among employees finishing work on the stadium’s fabric roof panels.

Daly City, CA, police say Moustafa Algazawy was changing a light bulb above some storage lockers when he fell.

He stood on top of a metal cage that stores propane tanks to change the bulb.

He was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

An autopsy will determine whether Algazawy died from electrocution or the fall.

A manager who saw the employee fall suffered a heart attack. Cal-OSHA says the manager had a “severe grief reaction” after witnessing the worker’s death.

Christopher Dupree fell about 150 feet while painting a water tank in Hurtsboro, AL.

Paramedics tried to revive him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The local sheriff’s department said Dupree was suspended from a rope on top of the water tower and was wearing a harness, but it appeared there might have been some malfunction of the safety equipment that caused the fall. Dupree was one of three workers at the tank that day.

At first, Dupree’s wife sued her husband’s employer, a general contractor, the Russell County Water Authority and an engineering firm. However, the lawsuit was later amended to focus on Robinson and Sons Construction Services, because it was responsible for workplace safety on the project.

In closing arguments, the lawyer for Dupree’s wife asked jurors to return a verdict that would send a message to all employers that they must provide a safe working environment for employees.

Alejandro Valladares was killed after falling head-first into a trench from the forks of a forklift at a construction site in Hermosa Beach.

Valladares was buried beneath excavated soil that caved in on top of him.

Workers for a contractor, David B. Shaw Concrete and Block, were installing a temporary shoring beam into a 12-foot-long trench.

Valladares was standing on a plywood platform that had been placed on the fork of the forklift. He was using a handheld compactor to drive a beam into a hole. The lift carrying him was about 15 feet from the base of the trench. He lost his balance due to heavy vibration from the compactor.

Workers couldn’t rescue Valladares because the ground in the area wasn’t stable.

Emergency workers used cranes to recover his body, a task that took four hours.

Cal-OSHA stopped work at the site and is investigating.

Valladares was just 29-year-old.

Trenches more than five-feet deep must be properly shored. Also, workers should not ride on the forks of a forklift unless a specialized platform is used.

17-year-old Ameri Zequir was taking out garbage from a Long Island, NY, Dunkin Donuts, when he fell into an uncovered manhole and died in the cesspool below.

His death wasn’t instant. Rescuers were able to talk to him as he struggled to stay afloat in the hole filled with 8 feet of sewage.

Zequir was pulled out but pronounced dead at a local hospital.

According to WCBS-TV, garbage bins were located behind some sawhorses with the open cesspool nearby.

Neighbors said the alley containing the open cesspool had been in disrepair for years.

Sources told WCBS that criminal charges hinge on how long the cesspool was open and who knew about the danger. The county district attorney is investigating.

Police say it’s possible the cesspool cover was dislodged during snow removal, but no one knows why it remained open.

Detectives have found half of the manhole cover and believe the other half may be at the bottom of the pit that Zeqir fell into.

Frantz Pierre broke his ankle when he fell on a sidewalk where water was flowing from an outdoor sink used to wash clothes.

The South Carolina Workers’ Compensation Commission found that Pierre wasn’t required to live in the employer-provided housing, so he shouldn’t receive comp benefits.

Courts often consider what is known as the bunkhouse rule in these cases. The rule requires workers’ comp for employees who are injured while on an employer’s premises if they are required to be there. Courts often consider whether an employee’s use of the premises is part of their compensation.

Pierre appealed the commission’s decision. A state circuit court upheld the ruling.

But Pierre appealed once more to the South Carolina Supreme Court which overturned the decision. It said the worker should receive comp benefits.

The state’s highest court found that Pierre was essentially required to live on the grounds because he and other migrant workers employed by the company didn’t earn enough money to rent seasonal housing.

Do you think the court made the right decision? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Cite: Pierre v. Seaside Farms, Inc., SC Supreme Court, No. 26777, 2/16/10.

In the first year of the Obama administration, OSHA was busy handing out fines the likes of which hadn’t been seen for eight years. Here’s our rundown of 10 significant fines from the last 12 months, and what they mean for businesses:

1. OSHA issues largest fine ever: $87.4 million to BP. This fine demonstrates OSHA’s intent to check up on companies once they’ve made serious safety mistakes. The agency evaluated BP’s progress after the 2005 fire and explosion that killed 15 people and injured 170 more at its Texas City, TX refinery. OSHA issued 270 “notifications of failure to abate” and identified 439 new willful violations at the plant.
2. Two executives face prison time and huge fines in deaths of five workers. Phillipe Goutagny and James Thompson, executives with RPI Coating, each face 2.5 years in prison and a fine up to $1.25 million if convicted. On Oct. 2, 2007, vapor from a solvent ignited inside a tunnel at a hydroelectric plant in Colorado. Workers survived the blast but were overcome by smoke and fumes and died of asphyxiation. OSHA says it will work more closely with the Justice Department in cases like these to bring criminal charges against executives with penalties that include prison time.
3. OSHA wastes no time in using new per-employee citations, issues $1.2 million fine. G.S. Robbins & Co. of St. Louis, MO, was hit with 21 egregious willful citations for hazardous chemical handling. Each citation was on a per-instance basis. Even during this period of difficult economic recovery, OSHA won’t hesitate to use per-instance, per-employee fines to hike total fine amounts. This wasn’t the only instance in which OSHA used per-instance citations in 2009 (see item #7 below).
4. Company hit with $1.14 million fine following employee complaint. Are the big fines relegated only to incidents involving deaths or multiple serious injuries? Hardly. OSHA began a December 2008 inspection at Milk Specialties in Whitehall, WI, in response to an employee complaint. Willful citations were issued for the employer’s failure to comply with OSHA’s confined space and lockout/tagout regulations. OSHA is taking employee complaints seriously.
5. After two similar incidents, owner and manager go to jail. ANC Roofing of Santa Rosa, CA, owner Kenneth Alton pleaded no contest to failing to protect employees from a hazard. He was sentenced to nine months in jail and a $248,000 fine. Supervisor Robert McAfee pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor violation and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. On May 11, 2006, an ANC employee backed into an unguarded skylight and fell 21 feet to his death. Four months later, another ANC employee suffered major head trauma when he fell 19 feet from an unprotected skylight.
6. OSHA fines Wal-Mart $7,000 for worker trampling incident. A Wal-Mart worker was trampled to death by a crowd of 2,000 shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving in 2008. OSHA said Wal-Mart should have recognized that its employees were exposed to being crushed by the crowd based on previous experience. Wal-Mart fought the fine. OSHA used the General Duty Clause to issue the fine and has said it will use the GDC in similar situations where safety was compromised but a specific regulation wasn’t violated.
7. Company faces $1.09 million OSHA fine for 202 willful violations. OSHA didn’t really need anyone’s permission to start issuing per-instance fines (see item #3 above), but it got the go-ahead in the form of a decision from the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC). The appeals panel ruled OSHA properly cited Smalis Painting Co. on a per-employee basis for violations of the lead-in-construction regulations, in connection with a project near Pittsburgh, PA. OSHA monitored six Smalis employees for lead exposure. Based on that data, OSHA issued violations for all employees who would have been exposed to the same hazards.
8. OSHA is getting companies to agree to implement safety and health improvements above what’s required by regulations. A-1 Excavating of Bloomer, WI, agreed to make numerous changes in its work processes in exchange for lowering fines from almost $900,000 to $470,000. A-1 has to hire a full-time safety director, develop and implement site-specific safety and health plans for all major projects, identify all job sites to OSHA before work begins for the next three years, reduce the salary of job superintendents and project managers who fail to comply with OSHA requirements, and retain a third-party safety consultant.
9. Cintas agrees to pay $3 million in fines and to comply with other conditions. In some cases, it hasn’t been an either-or situation between fines and strict safety improvements. After a worker was killed when he fell onto an unguarded conveyor and was dragged into a 300-degree industrial dryer, Cintas agreed to the huge fine and to retain a team of independent experts to develop permanent fixes and review interim controls. Cintas also agreed to hire additional safety staff, conduct more frequent internal safety inspections, and establish new systems to examine employee complaints.
10. A construction company agrees to pay $750,000 in fines and cut the pay of unsafe supervisors. Broadway Concrete of New York, NY, agreed to reduce the salaries of senior job superintendents who failed to comply with job safety practices. Broadway also agreed to hire a full-time corporate safety director, develop a new corporate safety plan, and provide OSHA with information on major projects and access to all job sites for the next four years.

What do you think of OSHA’s recent enforcement tactics? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

On Aug. 15, 2009, 29-year-old Carl Beck fell 42 feet from a roof in Washington, PA, while laying shingles and died.

Beck worked for C.A. Franc Construction. OSHA issued the company $539,000 in fines. Company owner, Christopher Franc, also faces $250,000 and six months in prison in connection with his guilty plea to criminal charges of violating safety rules.

OSHA found the company had failed to provide any fall protection to its employees working on a pitched roof 40 feet above the ground. The agency issued 10 per-instance willful citations, one for each employee working on the roof without fall protection. An 11th citation says Frank failed to train a new employee.

The company has 15 days to respond to the OSHA citations. Christopher Franc will be sentenced June 18.

OSHA has fined warehouse owner Lyons & Sons of Camden, NJ, $21,750 and chocolate maker Cocoa Services LP of Moorestown, NJ, $17,450. Lyons owns the building that houses Cocoa Services and manages the chocolate company.

Last summer, 29-year-old Vincent Smith II fell into a vat used for melting chocolate. He was hit by an agitator used to mix the chocolate and killed.

A co-worker slammed on an emergency shutoff switch when Smith fell in, but it was too late.

Both companies face serious violations for:

• lacking railings around floor openings or working platforms above the melting tanks
• exposing employees working on melting-tank platform to nine-foot falls, and
• failing to provide fire extinguisher training.

Lyons faces additional violations for failing to provide enclosures or guards over energized wires on melting tank boilers and failing to provide a first aid program.

The companies have 15 days to decide whether to contest the fines.

James King, 79, died of injuries he received after falling from the second or third step of a ladder and striking his head on the floor at the Walmart in Russellville, AR, according to the Russellville Courier News. King was a greeter and assembler at the store.

He’d been trying to remove a box that contained a bicycle from a storage rack.

He was taken to the hospital where he later died.

OSHA investigated and found no violations.

A burned out light, two identical doors and an 18-foot fall add up to a costly jury verdict for one employer.

Seattle firefighter Mark Jones was working an overnight shift at a city fire station on Dec. 23, 2003.

He woke at about 3 a.m. from his second-floor bunk to use the bathroom. Then he mistook a nearby door to the station’s fire pole for the restroom. The two doors were on the same wall, six feet apart.

He fell 18 feet to the first floor. He wasn’t working at his usual fire station that night.

A safety light that normally illuminates the fire pole alcove had burned out. A chain that would have restricted access hadn’t been latched.

Jones suffered brain and spine injuries, along with 10 broken ribs, multiple pelvic fractures and other injuries.

The injured firefighter received minimal disability benefits under the state’s pension system. He’s unable to work any sustainable job.

He sued the city, and a jury awarded him $12.7 million.

Since the accident, the department has installed reflective tape around fire pole shafts and protective glass doors with special handles that don’t open unless they’re pushed in.

Here’s a recent example and how the case was decided.

Skanska Koch was hired to renovate the Triborough Bridge in New York City. On May 6, 2008, an employee fell through an uncovered hole about 37 feet to the ground and died from his injuries.

The employee wasn’t tied off. OSHA issued a serious violation fine of $3,500 for a failure to provide appropriate fall protection.

Skanska Koch appealed the fine to the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, arguing this was a case of unpreventable employee misconduct.

An OSHRC administrative law judge rejected the company’s argument and upheld the fine.

The company said it had a policy that required all employees to be tied off at all times.

However, this is a written summary of rules that employees received: “All employees are required to wear a safety harness/lanyard at all times while on this jobsite. Although some work tasks may not require you to wear a harness/lanyard, you must have it with you at all times so you are always prepared to tie off when the need arises.”

The judge said that suggests there are times when employees are not required to tie off.

But that’s not the only problem the judge found with the company’s safety practices. Supervisors and safety managers testified that they conducted inspections to see if workers were using fall protection by looking up at the employees 37 feet above to see if they were tied off. The judge said that is not a reasonable method of discovering violations.

Evidence also showed that when a violation was found, supervisors didn’t effectively enforce the rule. Even though the company had a progressive enforcement plan, when a supervisor would find an employee working without being tied off, he would merely yell at them rather than report the incident for discipline. The judge said merely using verbal warnings isn’t a sufficient method of enforcing safety rules.

What do you think about this decision? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Also vote on our poll this week on workers and safety regulations on our home page.

Cite: Secretary of Labor v. Skanska Koch, Inc., OSHRC, No. 08-1623, 10/1/09. PDF of the decision available here.

When a worker doesn’t use PPE and dies on the job as a result, is the employer responsible or is it a case of employee misconduct?

Here’s a recent example and how the case was decided.

Skanska Koch was hired to renovate the Triborough Bridge in New York City. On May 6, 2008, an employee fell through an uncovered hole about 37 feet to the ground and died from his injuries.

The employee wasn’t tied off. OSHA issued a serious violation fine of $3,500 for a failure to provide appropriate fall protection.

Skanska Koch appealed the fine to the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, arguing this was a case of unpreventable employee misconduct.

An OSHRC administrative law judge rejected the company’s argument and upheld the fine.

The company said it had a policy that required all employees to be tied off at all times.

However, this is a written summary of rules that employees received: “All employees are required to wear a safety harness/lanyard at all times while on this jobsite. Although some work tasks may not require you to wear a harness/lanyard, you must have it with you at all times so you are always prepared to tie off when the need arises.”

The judge said that suggests there are times when employees are not required to tie off.

But that’s not the only problem the judge found with the company’s safety practices. Supervisors and safety managers testified that they conducted inspections to see if workers were using fall protection by looking up at the employees 37 feet above to see if they were tied off. The judge said that is not a reasonable method of discovering violations.

Evidence also showed that when a violation was found, supervisors didn’t effectively enforce the rule. Even though the company had a progressive enforcement plan, when a supervisor would find an employee working without being tied off, he would merely yell at them rather than report the incident for discipline. The judge said merely using verbal warnings isn’t a sufficient method of enforcing safety rules.

What do you think about this decision? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Also vote on our poll this week on workers and safety regulations on our home page.

Cite: Secretary of Labor v. Skanska Koch, Inc., OSHRC, No. 08-1623, 10/1/09. PDF of the decision available here.

The number of violations in the top 10 increased almost 30% over the same time period in 2008.

The violations are:

1. Scaffolding: 9,093
2. Fall protection: 6,771
3. Hazard communication: 6,378
4. Respiratory protection: 3,803
5. Lockout/tagout: 3,321
6. Electrical (wiring): 3,079
7. Ladders: 3,072
8. Powered industrial trucks (forklifts): 2,993
9. Electrical: 2,556
10. Machine guarding: 2,364.

OSHA will update these numbers later in 2009. The preliminary list was released at the National Safety Council’s annual congress.

In April, Charles Sittig was killed at the CES Environmental Services facility in Port Arthur, TX.

Three men have died at CES plants since December 2008.

OSHA cited the company for 34 violations, including a willful citation for failure to establish a rescue team capable of assisting a worker who becomes incapacitated while cleaning out chemicals tanks.

Other citations include raised platforms without railings, poorly maintained ladders and failure to develop decontamination procedures.

The company has 15 days to decide whether to contest the citations.

Two workers died recently at CES’ Houston plant. In December 2008, one worker died in an explosion that sent metal debris into nearby properties. In July 2009, a CES employee died when an explosion and flash fire at the Houston plant knocked him from the top of a mobile tank he was filling with water. OSHA is still investigating that death.

An OSHA investigation says Ismael Octtaviani-Mercado died from a 31-foot fall at the Palm Beach International Airport.

Octtaviani-Mercado had jury-rigged a stool to remove a light fixture, then tumbled over a rail and fell three stories.

Using the stool placed him higher than the nearby rail. Investigators believe he lost his footing and went over the rail.

Octtaviani-Mercado was working on an air surveillance radar tower that had been decommissioned after heavy damage caused by hurricanes in 2004.

He decided on his own to go to the third level to salvage light fixtures for use on an active tower. The fixtures are expensive, and it was common practice to salvage them for use elsewhere.

He was working alone when he fell.

OSHA doesn’t have the authority to fine other federal agencies, but it can perform investigations like this one.

Men’s Health magazine has ranked 100 U.S. cities from least to most accident prone.

The most accident-prone: Charleston, WV, followed by Jacksonville, FL, and Corpus Christi, TX.

Safest cities: Rochester, NY, Burlington, VT, and Los Angeles.

The magazine also provides break-outs by category. Most fatal workplace accidents: Cheyenne, WY, Bangor, ME, and Modesto, CA. Highest number of fatal falls: Charleston, WV, Denver and Baltimore.

Men’s Health used stats on fatal workplace accidents (Bureau of Labor Statistics); deaths from car crashes, poisoning, drowning, falls and fires (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention); emergency-room visits (American Hospital Association); and bandage sales.

Check stats for your city, here.

The site, DeathRiskRankings.com, was developed by researchers and students at Carnegie Mellon University.

It compares mortality risks by gender, age, cause of death and geographic region.

For example, men ages 40-49 are more likely to die from a fall than of eight types of cancer. The No. 1 cause of death among women 20-29 is transportation incidents. For 20-year-old males, 80% of their deaths are from accidents, homicides and suicides.

That’s what happened to Sims Bark Co. and Sims Stone Co. in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.

OSHA received a complaint about safety at one of Sims’ locations and determined that similar hazards might exist at its other locations.

Result: $576,750 in OSHA fines after inspectors visited six Sims facilities.

Willful citations were issued for:

• allowing workers to service, unjam and clean machinery without procedures to ensure they wouldn’t be caught in or struck by equipment or burned by machines’ heat strips, and
• exposing workers to dangers associated with being caught in fast moving machinery.

OSHA issued serious citations for:

• lack of employee training
• exposure to electric shocks
• lack of fall protection
• lack of machine guards
• exposure to noise hazards
• struck-by dangers, and
• accumulation of combustible dust.

Sims also faces other-than-serious citations for failing to keep injury/illness logs according to OSHA rules.

The company has 15 business days to comply with or contest the citations.

A rope broke on the scaffolding, but both men were prevented from falling by their safety harnesses.

A rescue team was able to pull one man to safety quickly, but the second dangled from the side of the building for about 45 minutes before he was pulled up to the roof.

While that may sound scary, it also shows how strong the fall protection was — it was able to keep the man from falling for almost an hour.

Neither worker was seriously injured.

Watch KTLA video of one man’s rescue here. (Better yet, show it to workers who use fall protection to drive home the message of why it’s needed.)

Last week, a worker was killed when he fell more than 20 stories from a high-rise construction site in Dallas.

Jose Aguila, 37, was installing metal louvers on the side of the building. A scaffold collapsed, and the worker’s safety harness failed, according to a report by NBC-5 in Dallas.

In June, OSHA announced an increase in construction-site inspections in Texas due to the high rate of worker fatalities and serious injuries.

Raleigh Roussell, with contractor organization TEXO, complains that some OSHA inspectors arriving at construction sites are transfers from other OSHA areas who don’t have construction experience. “The hazards are much different than those in a plant,” he said.

Personal injury attorney Mark Werbner is also critical of OSHA’s inspections, but for a much different reason.

Werbner says the agency is still far too easy on contractors and the fines for violations aren’t high enough.

What do you think? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Employee Noel Collins was injured due to a fall while installing ceiling tile in a movie theater owned by West 13th Street Owners Corp. He sued, claiming he wasn’t provided with an appropriate safety device, in this case a scaffold.

Collins had constructed a makeshift scaffold consisting of one piece of plywood on top of an A-frame ladder with the other end of the plywood resting on a wall that was the same height as the ladder.

The company argued that Collins was the sole cause of his injuries because he didn’t use materials on hand to construct a proper scaffold.

But the court said expecting the employee to build his own scaffold from scratch “improperly shifted the responsibility for creating a proper safety device” from the employer to the employee.

Now a jury will decide on damages.

Cite: Collins v. West 13th Street Owners Corp., Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Dept., NY, 6/30/09.

A worker slipped and fell into a vat of hot melted chocolate and died at a factory in Camden, NJ.

29-year-old Vincent Smith II was one of four workers on a platform above the vat at the Lyons & Sons facility. They were dumping solid chocolate into the vat to be melted.

After falling, he was hit by an agitator that’s used to mix the chocolate and killed.

The man appeared to have died instantly from the blow to the head from the agitator.

A co-worker slammed on an emergency shutoff switch, but it was too late.

News media accounts haven’t included details about the quality or presence of guardrails around the vat. OSHA is investigating.

“Make no mistake about it: The Department of Labor (DOL) is back in the enforcement business,” Solis told an audience of safety professionals in San Antonio, TX, attending Safety 2009.

She acknowledges that in these difficult economic times it’s more difficult for safety professionals to sell employee safety and health to their companies. For that reason, Solis said the agency wants to work with more companies to help them provide safer workplaces so that mothers and fathers can return home, uninjured, to their children each day.

But the current recession isn’t stopping OSHA and its parent department, DOL, from stepping up enforcement.

Solis noted that OSHA’s 2010 budget request calls for 130 more inspectors. In comments to reporters after her speech, Solis said, “I’d like to have more [inspectors], but we’re not in that position,” due to the economy.

The Secretary was asked about the lack of a permanent administrator for OSHA. Jordan Barab is the acting administrator and will assume the No. 2 position at the agency once a permanent head is confirmed. Solis expressed frustration with the U.S. Senate confirmation process. She noted that there are other nominees to DOL positions who have been in the pipeline for four months without being confirmed. She said it was important to have a new leader of OSHA, and that’s why Barab was appointed interim administrator, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation.

Solis said she hasn’t yet read the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that found deficiencies with OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program. She said she agrees with the concerns expressed by the GAO and by members of the House and Senate regarding OSHA’s enforcement capabilities.

The Secretary also took the opportunity during her speech in front of thousands of safety professionals in San Antonio to announce a new initiative to decrease construction fatalities and injuries in Texas. Since 2007, there have been 145 construction fatalities in Texas, a number Solis called “intolerable.”

Beginning in July, OSHA will increase the number of inspectors in Texas for a concentrated effort aimed at construction sites. If an inspector sees scaffold, fall, trenching or other hazards, they’re empowered to launch an immediate investigation.

Check back with SafetyNewsAlert.com often this week for updates from the ASSE Safety 2009 conference.

Leonidas Gomez was performing demolition work on a building in New York City.

The building was already partially demolished, and he had to remove a window from the remaining structure.

The only way for him to do that was to stand on a fire escape.

While he was trying to remove the window, the fire escape detached from the building, and Gomez fell to the ground.

The worker sued for his injuries, claiming that the fire escape should be considered a scaffold under New York law.

The court agreed. It said the fact that a fire escape is usually a permanent structure and a scaffold is a temporary one didn’t matter in this case.

Since a scaffold couldn’t be erected on the partially demolished building, the fire escape acted as a scaffold and the law applied.

New York’s unique scaffold law requires building owners and general contractors to provide workers with proper scaffolds, hoists, harnesses and other appropriate PPE for use when working at elevations.

Cite: Gomez v. City of New York et al, New York Supreme Court, 6/11/09.

California authorities have made massive allegations of workers’ comp fraud against an employer.

The Orange County District Attorney has charged the owners of three California roofing businesses with $38 million in workers’ comp fraud.

Michael Petronella and Devon Kile are accused of skirting comp payments by under-reporting the number of employees working for their companies and by discouraging their workers from filing claims. They both face between five and 102 years in prison.

Officials started an investigation when an employee of one of the companies fell off a roof and collected $6,000 in workers’ comp coverage.

The employee said he was working for Petronella Roofing, which had workers’ comp coverage. In fact, he was on a different company’s payroll, Western Cleanoff. Western had no comp insurance because it claimed it didn’t have any employees.

The indictment cites 41 other instances of employees who filed comp claims while on the payroll of uninsured companies owned by Petronella and Kile.

The district attorney accuses the two owners of playing a shell game of shuffling payrolls to make fraudulent claims for uncovered workers who were injured.

Why should other companies care?

Does comp fraud by some companies impact others who do the right thing and purchase proper insurance coverage?

One obvious reason it does: Companies without proper comp insurance have lower costs and can charge less than competitors.

Here’s another reason: Fraud is a key factor behind high comp insurance rates for other companies. When employers under-report the number of insured workers to reduce their comp premiums, it looks like there are fewer workers in a particular industry.

Comp premiums are based on injury rates in an industry. If the number of total workers is too low, but the number of injured workers stays the same, it appears that an industry has a higher accident rate than it actually does.

In California, where this case took place, the state Workers’ Compensation Insurance Bureau recently recommended a 24% average increase in comp premiums.

In a recent poll on Safety News Alert, only 19% of respondents said the current workers’ comp laws were just about right.

What do you think about the state of workers’ comp? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

The Orange County Register has more about this fraud case here and here.

ANC roofing owner Kenneth Alton entered a no contest plea to the charge of failing to protect employees from a hazard. He was sentenced to nine months in jail and fined $248,000.

Company supervisor Robert McAfee plead no contest to a single misdemeanor violation and was sentenced to 30 days in jail.

Another former ANC owner will be sentenced in May.

On May 11, 2006, ANC employee Antonio Serrano backed into an unguarded skylight and fell 21 feet to his death while performing roofing work. Cal/OSHA fined ANC $14,400 for not providing a barrier to prevent a fall through a skylight opening in that incident.

Four months later on Sept. 21, 2006, ANC employee Jose Maya suffered major head trauma when he fell 19 feet from an unprotected skylight while working on a different roofing project. Cal/OSHA fined ANC $70,000 in that incident and referred the case to the Sonoma County District Attorney’s office.

An investigation revealed that ANC continued to operate in flagrant violation of the California Labor Code after Serrano died in the first incident.

California law requires that employees have fall protection if they’re working within six feet of a skylight.

Slips, trips and falls are routinely one of the top causes of injuries in workplaces. They also subtract from a company’s bottom line due to medical and workers’ comp insurance, lost productivity and retraining costs.

Here are 12 common mistakes made by companies when it comes to slip, trip and fall prevention:

• Mistake #12: Starting from scratch. There’s no need to. One place to start: consensus standards, such as ASTM’s Practice for Safe Walking Surfaces and ANSI’s Standard for the Provision of Slip Resistance on Walking/Working Surfaces.
• Mistake #11: Missing the opportunity to control walking style. Employees need to be reminded not to run and to keep their eyes on their walking path, especially while carrying items.
• Mistake #10: Relying on ineffective measurements. Best practice: Test flooring as it will be installed and used, under expected conditions (including wetness).
• Mistake #9: Short flight stairs and other elevation changes. Stairs with three or fewer steps need to be marked with contrasting color to other walking surfaces and be well lit. Seriously consider eliminating any change in level that’s 1/4 inch or greater.
• Mistake #8: Footwear. Shoes meant for both indoor and outdoor working conditions may not provide the best protection against slip, trips and falls in either circumstance because of their design compromises. Shoe features that need to be considered are: tread pattern, tread composition, sole height, support, lacing and adjustment method.
• Mistake #7: Ignoring pre-loss indicators. Slippery floors often lead to a lot of near-misses without injury before an incident with injury occurs. Attention needs to be paid to near-misses.
• Mistake #6: Less than adequate housekeeping. Any slip, trip and fall prevention program needs to include a serious statement of commitment to keeping walking/working surfaces clean.
• Mistake #5: Relying on single-factor solutions. While it may seem prudent to focus on the largest potential cause of slips, trips and falls in a particular facility, secondary factors shouldn’t be ignored after the primary one is addressed. Example: If a floor’s finish is addressed, the facility should still look into floor treatments, footwear, warnings and spill response.
• Mistake #4: Unresponsive contaminant control. Contaminants aren’t just chemicals. In some facilities they may be weather-related or food. Elimination of the contaminant should be considered first, followed by reduction and then dealing with the contaminants once they’re present.
• Mistake #3: Lack of proper cleaning procedures. Problems with cleaning range from poor spill response to improper daily cleaning to insufficient or nonexistent deep cleaning.
• Mistake #2: Selecting flooring inappropriate for the application. If a flooring sample can be installed to test under actual conditions, that’s ideal. If that’s not possible, find other examples of similar installations to yours.
• Mistake #1: Lack of proper follow-up. Selecting the proper flooring and establishing policies to prevent slips, trips and falls are the right places to start. But policies must be reinforced and updated if necessary. Companies should follow up on near-misses as well as injuries.

Adapted from a presentation by Keith Vidal of Vidal Engineering in St. Louis and David Natalizia of Dynamic Safety in Costa Mesa, CA, at the 2008 ASSE Safety Conference. For information on ASSE’s 2009 Safety Conference, click here.

A Phoenix police officer tripped over an electrical cord at work. She required knee and back surgery.

Afterward, she could only get around with crutches or a wheelchair.

Her doctor recommended that she be provided with housekeeping services, and she sought that as a benefit from her employer’s workers’ comp insurer.

The insurer fought the claim. The worker said housekeeping would be “other treatment” under state comp law. The court didn’t see it that way.

However, this isn’t the case in all states. California has awarded injured employees workers’ comp payments for housekeeping.

Court Cite: Patches v. City of Phoenix, Arizona Court of Appeals, No. 1 CA-IC 08-2008, 2/24/09.