Inspection Detail

Inspection: 1465096.015 - Welter Forest Products

Inspection Information - Office: Appleton Area Office

Investigation Summary

At 7:50 a.m. on February 18, 2020, an employee was working at a sawmill. He was a laborer. He was at the sawmill's edger operator station, at the end of the green chain line where employees stack lumber. He was operating a McDonough edger. He was feeding boards and cants from the head saw and resaw into the edger. The resaw was a model number WPRS-ECD West Plains Resaw Systems, Inc. resaw, with serial number 1006. He was reaching for a board over a rotating shaft on a chain conveyor. The conveyor was the log chain that connected the resaw to the edger. His sweatshirt was pulled into an unguarded rotating shaft. His sweatshirt become entangled in the shaft. The employee was able to pull himself out of the sweatshirt, but he suffered multiple compound fractures to his right arm. He was hospitalized. Edger operators were exposed to unguarded rotating shafts for the lumber chain conveyors on a daily basis in the production of rough lumber. The chain conveyors brought lumber directly from the head saw on the right or resaw on the left. The operator than fed the lumber into the edger. Employees stood within inches of the rotating shaft and would at times bump against it. Other equipment at the site, in addition to the resaw and the edger, included a chain outfeed conveyor, a McDonough head saw, a Morbark Chip-Pac chipper, and a Green chain line. Investigations 124268 and 124310 describe the same incident. Both have the same UPA, 1545205.

Keywords: Arm, Caught By, Chain, Clothing, Compound Fracture, Conveyor, Edger, Fracture, Machine Guarding, Machine operator, Pulled In, Rotating Shaft, Saw, Sawmill, Unguarded