Inspection Detail

Inspection: 303733760 - Duffy Bros. Construction Co.

Inspection Information - Office: Omaha Area Office

Investigation Summary

At approximately 7:30 a.m. on September 28, 2002, Employee #1, five coworkers, and the jobsite foreman, all employed by a brick and block masonry contractor, were tasked with the demolition and repair of a damaged masonry wall at a boneless meat processing facility in Omaha, NE. Employee #1 and the foreman climbed on a scaffold and were inspecting the damaged block wall to determine the best approach for tearing down the wall. The coworkers were located on the roof of the building and shouted that the damaged wall was going to collapse. The foreman jumped off the scaffold onto a nearby forklift, while Employee #1 was struck by a piece of the block wall in his upper chest. The planking on the top of the scaffold platform broke, and Employee #1 fell to the lower level of the scaffold that was about 5 ft above the ground. The coworkers attended to Employee #1, removing him from the scaffold and called emergency services. Employee #1 was transported a local hospital for treatment. He died approximately seventeen hours from the time of the accident. During the accident investigation, it was determined that there was no written scope of work between the company doing the work and the general contractor for the job. The job was considered an emergency as the wall needed to be repaired immediately. There was no written engineering survey generated to outline how the job was to be done or to address the possibility that any portion of the wall might collapse.

Keywords: CHEST, REPAIR, WALL, DISMANTLING, COLLAPSE, CONSTRUCTION, FALL, STRUCK BY, FALLING OBJECT, SCAFFOLD