UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Abstract: Employee #1, a carpenter foreman, and a coworker, a carpenter, were assigned to chip splashed concrete off the underside beams of the Owings Mills Bridge, which crosses the Western Maryland railroad tracks. This was not the employee's normal job, but since the work was 99 percent complete and no other employees were available, he and the carpenter were assigned to finish it. Pieces of 2 by 6 and 2 by 8 lumber were cut and placed between the beams, which were about 8 ft apart. Two 2 by 12 scaffold planks (8 to 10 ft long) were laid across the 2 by 6s and 2 by 8s. Each employee worked from the scaffold planks. While the first beam was being cleaned, neither Employee #1 nor the carpenter had his safety belt and lanyard attached. After the first beam was finished, the platform was taken down and put up again on the next beam. They were one-third of the way through cleaning the second beam when they stopped for lunch. After lunch, both employees began manually chipping the concrete, again without their safety lanyards attached. Somehow Employee #1 fell approximately 30 ft from his scaffold plank to the ground, landing between the railroad tracks and the concrete base of the protection slope of the bridge. He was hospitalized and will lose six to eight weeks of work. The carpenter saw and heard nothing. Neither Employee #1 nor the carpenter felt that it was practical to attach the lanyards. Both had been present at a safety meeting held at the job site on December 13, 1986, when a film about working from elevations was shown. When a situation such as this arises in which employees feel they can not normally attach their safety lanyards, C-clamps are provided. In this case, they were in a vehicle at the accident site. The employees did not follow the employer's policy, which they had been taught as recently as two weeks before the accident, of using all available safety methods in erecting a safe work platform.