Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) Report for Maryland: Warehouseman Dies When Crushed By One of Several Earthmoving Equipment Tires He Was Loading Onto a Truck

摘要

On Thursday, April 16, 1998, a 46-year-old male warehouseman (the victim) was fatally injured when a tire he had lined up in preparation for loading onto a flatbed trailer fell on him. The victim was showing the new operations manager (witness) the procedure for loading heavy equipment (off-the-road) tires for shipment. Before the supervisor arrived to view the process, the victim had placed one tire forward on the flatbed truck. Two other tires were temporarily stored on the dock plate, immediately to the rear of a flatbed truck, which was backed up against the dock. The tires are 106-inches in diameter, 27-inches wide, with rounded bottom tread and weigh 2,813 pounds. To steady the two tires standing upright on their tread, the victim placed a forklift with the forks raised against the sidewall of the second tire from the flatbed truck. Using a pendant controlled electric hoist, the victim placed a special tire handling hook in the first tire and began to move it onto the flatbed. When he stepped from the dock plate onto the flatbed, the second tire fell and pinned the victim and the hoist's pendant controller under the tire. The weight of the tire was too heavy for the witness to remove, so he phoned for help and flagged another warehouseman with a forklift to lift the tire. Three emergency crews arrived within eight minutes. Using a forklift, the other warehouseman raised the tire high enough for rescuers to pull the flatbed truck and the victim to a point where emergency medical crews could attend to the victim. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. The MD/FACE Field Investigator concluded that to prevent similar future occurrences, employers should: (1) Assure storage of materials is stable and does not create a hazard by sliding, rolling or falling over; (2) Proper material handling procedures should be established for handling odd sized materials.