Inspection Detail

Inspection: 314028622 - Woofter Construction & Irrigation, Inc.

Inspection Information - Office: Wichita Area Office

Investigation Summary

On April 5, 2010, Employee #1 was performing repair on a drag chute for the grain elevator. Five Woofter Construction & Irrigation, Incorporated employees arrived at the Skyland Grain LLC Big Bow location. They had been summoned to Big Bow because the drag was grinding the grain up when they turned it on. Five of the Woofter employees were inside a tunnel, in addition, two of the Skyland employees were also present. They told Skyland employees to start the machine so that they could try to diagnose the problem. A Skyland employee turned the machine on and left. The Woofter employees decided from watching the grain move down the conveyor that there was a metal plate right at the transition that was causing the problem and that if they removed the plate it would solve the problem. This metal plate was inside the drag. Employee #1 and his coworkers then told Skyland employees to shut the machine off and not to turn it on until they said it was safe to do so. The drag conveyor stopped and Employee #1 and a coworker started to remove the metal plate. To do this, Employee #1 had to place his left arm inside the drag conveyor so that he could put a wrench on the head of the bolts as the coworker loosened them from the outside. They got one bolt off when all of the sudden the drag turned on. At this point, the coworker ran north east through the 90-foot tunnel to the entrance to tell the other coworkers to turn off the machine. As they both were running through the tunnel, the drag shut off. The drag ran for about 10 to 20 seconds. During this time, Employee #1's arm was amputated and he was free from the machine. The coworker then stated the drag turned on again for a couple of seconds and then shut down again. As the result, Employee #1 had his arm amputated in a piece of grain conveying equipment at the Skyland Grain LLC Big Bow location. This accident was the result of a failure to perform Lock Out /Tag Out on the equipment in question and instead assuming that someone else had that for them. Stanton County EMS and Sherriff arrived on scene in approximately 15 minutes. Employee #1 was missing the lower half of his arm and was being tended to by a couple of his coworkers. Employee #1 was transported to Wichita Ks by EagleMed and at last report was doing good and expected to be released by April 8, 2010.

Keywords: DRAG CHAIN CONVEYOR, AMPUTATED, REPAIR, GRAIN, LOCKOUT, UNGUARDED LIVE PARTS, SCRAP METAL, CONVEYOR, GRAIN ELEVATOR