Inspection Detail

Inspection: 1532848.015 - L & L Lumber Co., Inc.

Inspection Information - Office: Birmingham Area Office

Investigation Summary

At 1:15 p.m. on May 12, 2021, an employee working for a lumber company was drilling pairs of holes into wooden boards. The employee had mounted four pair of drill bits onto a frame. Each pair of drill bits could be positioned along the length of the board as needed and the motors for each pair could be turned on/off depending upon the order. Once the operator turned on the machine, all drill bit pairs needed for the order started turning and continued to turn until the machine was turned off. The employee was using three of the four drill bit pairs to drill the boards for an order. The employee placed a board onto the frame below the drill bits against the stop with her left hand. She used a lever in her right hand to raise the board to the spring loaded hold-downs and drill bits. She then raised the board to the drill bits and hold-downs using the lever in her right hand. The employee used the lever to lower the board and used her left hand to retrieve the board from the machine before placing it aside. The employee kept her left hand on the board during the entire cycle. The employee said that she noticed that the board was not correctly positioned and so she tried to move it with her left hand while at the same time using the lever to raise the board to the hold-downs/drill bits. The board would not move and her left hand slid along the board to one of the drill bit pairs. A drill bit caught her glove and pulled her finger to the drill bit. A coworker who accompanied the employee to the hospital said that she stated that the wood was harder than usual and it moved quickly causing her hand to be pulled into the drill bit. The gloves the employee wore had rubberized palm and fingers and were not tight fitting. The employee was hospitalized with a partially amputated and fractured finger.

Keywords: Amputated, Amputation, Catch Point, Caught Between, Caught By, Drill, Drill Bit, Drilling, Engineering Controls, Finger, Fracture, Glove, Hand, Inexperience, Instantaneous amputation, Lack of Engineering Controls, Lockout, Lockout/Tagout, Lumber, Lumberyard, Machine Guarding, Machine operator, Partial Amputation, Pulled In, Traumatic Amputation, Wood, Wood Board