As the dim early light washed over the Appalachian countryside, Jason Kingsley began his climb up the side of an 80-foot silo. Kingsley was not a morning person. But he was also broke and unemployed. So when a dairy farmer named Ronald Wood called to ask him to help to rescue a piece of machinery that had accidentally been buried under tons of hay and legumes, Kingsley said yes.

The death of a civilian employee at an Army Reserve facility in California has resulted in OSHA issuing safety violations to the U.S. Army Reserve 63 Regional Support Command. The incident at a Sacramento facility occurred when the automated lifting mechanism of a utility vehicle cargo box failed and pinned the worker between the bed and the vehicle frame, causing him fatal injuries.

A California construction company that dismantled a trench box while an employee was still working inside, causing him to be fatally crushed, has been cited by Cal/OSHA for safety violations. The agency determined that general contractor Bay Construction Co. committed willful-serious safety violations by unsafely removing a linear support rail that fell and killed the worker.

OSHA’s General Industry’s standard for the Control of Hazardous Energy (LOTO) 29 CFR 1910.147 addresses one of the most important safety regulations to protect workers from injury: lockout/tagout. The standard requires workers to isolate energy during servicing and maintenance of machines and equipment to prevent the unexpected startup or release of energy.

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), an industry group representing 1,000+ manufacturers, has petitioned Cal/OSHA about making changes to a rule governing the use of highly automated agricultural equipment. The AEM says the regulation, as drafted, would negate many of the benefits of highly automated agricultural equipment and autonomous agricultural equipment.

A construction worker was killed at a Brooklyn, New York worksite on the day before Thanksgiving by a piece of sheet metal that fell from an unapproved forklift. News sources say 44-year-old Over Paredes of Newark, New Jersey was working on the roof of a six-story condo development when a manual forklift that was hoisting part of a metal-framed wall topped onto its side, releasing the metal.

United States Congressman Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) has introduced a bill that would require OSHA to issue a workplace violence prevention standard for the health care industry. The Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act, H.R. 7141, directs OSHA to issue a standard requiring health care and social service employers to write and implement a workplace violence prevention plan.

Temporary workers should be protected from the sudden release of stored energy just as permanent workers are. That reminder from OSHA comes in a newly issued bulletin on lockout/tagout that explains the joint responsibility of host employers and staffing agencies to ensure that temporary employees are properly protected against this serious – potentially fatal - workplace hazard.

A company that provides temporary agriculture labor has been cited by OSHA, after one of its employees died from a heat-related illness. OSHA found that Rivera Agri Inc. failed to protect employees working in excessive heat after a farmworker succumbed to apparent heat-related symptoms while working in a cornfield near Grand Island, Nebraska.

At 5:30 in the morning on November 20th, a huge explosion tore through Consolidation Coal’s Number Nine mine. The force of the blast could be felt for miles. There would be dozens of other explosions in the days to come and intense fires. Ninety-nine miners were underground at the time; 21 managed to make it to the surface, the other 78 all died. Nineteen bodies were never recovered.