Articles Tagged with ''serious injuries & fatalities (SIFs)''

Serious workplace safety violations were found in connection with a September 2013 explosion that killed one worker and injured another at Canastota Wastewater Treatment plant in New York, according to OSHA.

Maryland lawmakers introduced a bill this week that would require companies to meet safety standards as a prequalification for working on public projects in the state. House Bill 951 (with 22 sponsors) and Senate Bill 774 (with 13 sponsors) were introduced by Maryland Delegate Brian McHale (D-46) and Senator Karen Montgomery (D-14).

I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to update you on the actions taken by MSHA and the mining community to improve mine safety and health, and on the results. Over the past year, MSHA has implemented several changes, continuing the transformation we have made to our agency, and to mine safety. I will share some of those with you today.

Following the drowning death of an untrained worker, Lucas Marine Acquisition Co. LLC has been cited for 22 safety violations by the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The employee died while doing surface supplied-air diving during underwater construction activities for the City of Fort Pierce Marina storm protection project on Aug. 6, 2013.

A volunteer firefighter and two contractors were killed Feb. 1 in the collapse of two cell phone towers in Clarksburg, West Virginia. News sources report that four workers were tethered to a 300-foot-tall tower while making repairs when the structure fell.

OSHA has released a new Fatal Fact resource on "Falls from Telecommunications Towers" (PDF*), illustrating how failure to plan, provide the right equipment, and train workers effectively can lead to worker deaths.

The CSB has released a new computer animation recreating the explosion and fire that killed seven workers at the Tesoro Refinery in Anacortes, Washington on April 2, 2010. The incident occurred when a nearly forty-year-old heat exchanger catastrophically failed during a maintenance operation to switch a process stream between two parallel banks of exchangers at the refinery.

The April 2010 fatal explosion and fire at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Washington was caused by damage to the heat exchanger, a mechanism known as “high temperature hydrogen attack” or HTHA, which severely cracked and weakened carbon steel tubing leading to a rupture, according to a CSB draft report released today.

One worker was killed and another injured when a 10’ unprotected trench collapsed December 5 less than ten minutes after the two entered it. Municipal District Services LLC, based in Cypress, Texas, was summoned to the scene to repair a water main that was accidentally damaged by a gas line technician.

The Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission has overturned a decision by an administrative law judge involving Wolf Run Mining Co.'s Sago Mine in Upshur County, W.Va., where 12 miners died in a massive explosion on Jan. 2, 2006.