UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

At 10:47 a.m. on November 19, 2021, an employee who worked maintenance for a sho pping mall and a coworker were tasked with discarding staged items from a parkin g lot into a 40-yard trash dumpster. The employee was operating a Caterpillar Fo rklift Powered Industrial Truck (PIT) while his coworker stood at the open doors of the dumpster assorting the trash into piles after the PIT had dropped the ma terials. While attempting to dispose of a large display plywood fire hydrant, th e employee stepped out of the driver's seat and reached from underneath the fork s to push the hydrant. From the coworker's location, he could see the employee's head and arm above the wall of the dumpster reaching toward the hydrant, which was placed on the elevated forks. The employee's foot slipped, and he fell forwa rd between the mast and the forklift cage. As he fell, the employee's foot hit t he tilt lever on the forklift pinning him between the mast and the ROPS. The emp loyee crushed his abdomen and died in the hospital.