Abstract: At approximately 3:00 p.m. on March 15, 2000, Employee #1, a blancher operator for Blue Diamond almond growers, was coming on duty after a shift change. She was walking through the machine processing area observing the operation when she noticed a pile of almonds on the floor near the incline auger that feeds the scalder on line #4. She completed her walk through and then returned to clean up the nuts. As she was brushing them away from the bottom end of the auger, her left index finger went into a 1 in. wide hole. The auger was turning inside the trough and her finger became caught and was amputated between the first and second joints. Employee #1 was administered first aid from the company nurse before being transported to U.C. Davis Medical Center, where she was treated and released. The hole was guarded with a screw-in plug that was required to be in place when the auger was operating. The plug is removed during sanitation procedures at night and replaced when sanitation is completed. The plug also had a chain attached so it could not be removed or lost. The nuts on the floor had fallen out of the open hole.