Inspection Detail

Inspection: 107093916 - Confish, Inc.

Inspection Information - Office: Jackson Area Office

Investigation Summary

At approximately 2:00 a.m. on March 28, 1997, Employee #1 was cleaning and scrubbing equipment in the freezer and hand fillet areas of a catfish processing plant. She was the only sanitation scrubber assigned to work in these areas. Her duties on the night shift, which started at 9:30 p.m., four nights/week, included making sure garbage from the day shift was picked up off the floors. As she did this, two coworkers went through the production areas, spraying all the machinery with Profome, a cleaning, degreasing, and sanitizing agent. After allowing time for the Profome to soak and loosen any deposited material, Employee #1 used a large abrasive scrub pad and a bucket of cleaning solution to remove any material that was still stuck. The sanitation group leader last saw her in the break room around 1:20 to 1:30 a.m., when she told the group leader and a coworker that everything was going smoothly and that she would be through between 3:00 and 3:30 a.m. The sanitation group leader then went outside into the alley for about 5 minutes to clean out a sewer drain. When he came back in he found Employee #1, who was down on her knees, choked by the neck-string of her blue plastic apron. The string had apparently become caught by and wrapped around the projecting shaft end of the idler roll of the belt conveyor that carried boxed fish fillets through a metal detector. She had been killed. After some initial confusion and panic, the group leader stopped the conveyor and cut the apron's neck string, which released Employee #1's body. He left the area immediately.

Keywords: CLOTHING, ASPHYXIATED, ROTATING SHAFT, WORK RULES, BELT CONVEYOR, CLEANING, CAUGHT BY, ROLLER--MACH/PART, NECK, UNGUARDED