COSHCON17 — The Young and the Active — The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, the umbrella group of all the nation’s COSH groups held its annual conference last week and I was privileged to be able to chair a very moving panel on “Lessons from Workplace Fatalities” with some of my heroes: family activist Katherine Rodriguez, whose father, Ray Gonzales was killed in a fire at BP Texas City in 2004, Tonya Ford, director the United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities, whose uncle Robert “Bobby” Fitch fell to his death at an Archer Daniel Midland plant in 2009, and Jonathan Karmel, author of Dying to Work: Death and Injury in the American Workplace.
It appears a welding accident lead to a deadly fire in Clovis, New Mexico. Three people were killed one was seriously injured. “This is one of the largest losses of life we’ve seen,” said Clovis Police Captain Roman Romero.
The three deceased are John Sandoval, 54; Robert Elebario, 51; and Billie Grabowsky, 52.
Rogelio Hernandez was the only one who survived the fire. He was treated at Plains Regional Medical Center in Clovis.
“I asked him what happened and what does he remember, and he said they were just in the shop welding a piece of pipe to a car and they noticed the gas can nearby had caught a spark,” explained Rogelio’s niece, Casandra Hernandez.
This article by Elizabeth Floyd Mair of the Altamont Enterprise is a rare summary of a court case involving an employer challenge of an OSHA citation related to the gruesome death of a day laborer who was dragged into a wood-chipper on May 4, 2016. The employer, Tony Watson, owner of Countryside Tree Care, is contesting citations totaling $141,811 related to the death of Justus Booze, a 23-year old day laborer halfway through his first day on the job.
An accident last week that claimed the life of a worker in Wayne, New Jersey is under investigation.
According to news reports, a motorist called 911 after being flagged down by workers employed by a landscaping company.
The April death of a construction worker killed by a falling beam has led OSHA to fine the worker’s employer and to issue multiple health and safety citations. According to OSHA, the company overstressed the beam during a demolition project, resulting in the beam’s failure.
Two workers were rushed to the hospital after an accident at a Brightline construction site in Miami.
Miami Department of Fire-Rescue officials were called to a Metromover car near Northwest First Avenue and Northwest Fifth Street just before 1 a.m. They found that one person fell from a nearby crane boom, while another was left dangling from a ledge.
A three-person investigative team from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is deploying to the scene of an incident that killed three workers and reportedly injured seven on Wednesday, February 8 at the Packaging Corporation of America (PCA) plant in DeRidder, Louisiana.
An operator and two servicing companies' failure to control a North Dakota oil well properly led to a flash fire that killed one worker and injured three others, federal investigators have found.
A 52-year-old employee of Most Wanted Well Service suffered fatal fall injuries and burns in the June 18, 2016 incident at a Watford City, North Dakota well site.
A teenaged oil company employee was killed last week in Tyler County, West Virginia when he was struck by a truck, then pinned between the truck and a sand silo, according to news sources.
Nineteen-year-old Hunger D. Osborn was acting as a spotter for a tractor-trailer that was backing up to off-load sand when the accident occurred Thursday morning at an oil well pad.