Inspection Detail

Inspection: 1081494.015 - Acadian Enterprises, Inc.

Inspection Information - Office: Iowa 0751910

Investigation Summary

At 2:45 p.m. on July 29, 2015, Employee #1 and a coworker, working for a tree trimming company, were sent to a residential dwelling site to chip/grind up bush material that a fellow landscaping company had been removing. The wood chipper was a Morbark brand, Beever edition, Model Number M18R, with an open drum measuring 37.75-in by 65-in. The wood chipper was parked in front of the house on the public street and was set to the auto-feed mode. The landscaping company had one worker on site. All three workers were rotating from the back of the house to bring the bushes to the front of the house and run them through the tree trimming company's wood chipper. Employee #1 brought bushes from the back of the house to the front yard and was running them through the chipper when he was caught by the spinning chipper drum and pulled into the machine. Both the coworker and landscaping worker were behind the dwelling, wearing hearing protection, and did not hear Employee #1 in distress. Employee #1 sustained fatal injuries and was killed. Safety devices were present on the wood chipper at the time of the accident.

Keywords: Brush Chipper, Caught In, Drum, Laceration, Rotating Parts, Tree Trimming