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.
Global retailer violates corporate-wide safety agreement
April 5, 2016
Walmart continues to endanger the safety and health of its employees despite a 2013 corporate-wide settlement agreement* with the OSHA to improve safety and health conditions at all of its store locations.
Workers at a Purina feed mill were exposed to 6 – 10 foot falls from ladderway floor openings and platforms lacking guardrails, OSHA investigators found during an October 2015 inspection of the Wichita, Kansas facility.
Twenty-one-year-old Jacob Casher was still a "new guy" employed by a Beaver-based plumbing company when he left home for work in September 2015. He probably never imagined that, as he worked to install a sewer line 11-feet underground in Butler, it was to be the last day of his life.
Even vinegar can be hazardous under certain circumstances.
An employee at the Rob Salamida Co. food manufacturing plant in Johnson City was instructed to enter and clean the insides of a 3,000-gallon tank containing vinegar on Sept. 28, 2015.
South Progress LLC apparently isn't making much progress in protecting its employees from fall hazards. OSHA inspectors, acting under the agency’s Regional Emphasis Program on Falls in Construction*, found South Progress employees doing framing work without fall protection at a residential community in Santa Rosa, Florida.
When followed, safety standards save lives and painful injuries. In the construction industry, ignoring them can lead to disaster, as it did for 54-year-old Gary Berthelot as he helped rebuild a Mississippi restaurant damaged by Hurricane Isaac.
An 18-year-old man lost his life just three months after starting work for Lunda Construction Company. The carpenter's apprentice was mixing concrete for the Richard I. Bong Memorial Bridge resurfacing project when a rough-terrain forklift struck and killed him.