An employee of a Massachusetts gutter cleaning company was working on a rooftop Nov. 29, 2015 when he fell, first striking a lower roof 11 feet below his original location, then falling another 15 to the ground.
OSHA issued citations to Alabama-based Stephens Plumbing for one willful and four serious safety violations. The agency initiated the inspection as part of its National Emphasis Program on Trenching and Excavation after an inspector saw workers in a trench without protection.
A machine operator who suffered fatal injuries as he serviced a high-speed conveyor belt in a Ladysmith paper mill in October 2015 might still be alive if his employer had ensured that equipment was powered down and locked out before the 46-year-old man entered the hazardous area.
The failure of an air-conditioning unit pipe released about 22 pounds of anhydrous ammonia into the air at the Russel Stover Candies Inc.’s Iola, Kansas facility on Sept. 23, 2015, setting off alarms and sending hundreds of workers scrambling for safety.
An OSHA compliance officer investigating a complaint at a New Jersey hospital reviewed the hospital’s OSHA 300 logs and found something that lead to an additional inspection – and multiple citations.
After two workers suffered partial amputations of their index fingers in separate incidents in October 2015, federal investigators found numerous machines lacked safety guards at the Holdrege facility of Becton, Dickinson and Company, a global medical technology company.
A Middletown, Pennsylvania contractor has been cited for multiple violations and fined $41,000 after a trench cave-in sent one of its workers to the hospital.
HVAC installer Timothy O’Neal Gearing and a co-worker were trying to unjam a saw stuck in a metal roof when the saw jerked loose, causing Gearing to lose his balance and fall through an unguarded skylight. The 39-year-old plunged to the concrete ground 15 feet below died from his injuries after being transported to a hospital.
A maintenance technician at a Georgia auto parts manufacturing company was engulfed in flames when the dust collector he was operating caused an explosion. The 33-year-old worker is still recovering from the third-degree burns on his upper body he received during the September 23, 2015 incident at Nakanishi Manufacturing Corp. in Winterville, Ga.
