Worker falls 70+ feet to his death at ConAgra mill, another at a Pepisco plant, manlifts involved in both cases [The Pump Handle]

Jay Van Buskirk, 47, was employed less than a year at the ConAgra Foods flour mill in Alton, Illinois, before falling to his death on August 4, 2012.   The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

“Van Buskirk was standing on a man lift platform and moving between the fourth and fifth floors of the nine-story flour mill when he fell. The Madison County Coroner’s Office reported that the death was due to head trauma and that the fall was as much as 74 feet. According to the coroner’s office, the man had complained of feeling dizzy prior to the fall.”

A week earlier it was Brett Alan Hauk, 51, who fell to his death from a manlift at the Pepisco Quaker plant in Danville, Illinois.  The coverage in the local newspaper indicates Mr. Hauk fell about five stories.

When I read these stories I also thought of Robert Fitch, 51, of Lincoln, Nebraska who also fell to his death in January 2009 from a manlift.  In Mr. Fitch’s case it was an Archer Daniels Midland plant.

Three multi-national corporations.  Three manlift fatalities.

Belt-operated manlifts date back to the late 1800′s.  They are installed in multi-story plants to transport personnel up and down floors more quickly than using stairs, and without the expense or space required by an elevator.  The photos below are from the scene of a worker fatality in 2005 at a livestock feed plant.  The belt-operated manlift dated back to the 1930′s.

(Photo credit: NIOSH, Firefighter fatality investigation report, August 2006)

One worker described to me these manlifts as vertical conveyor belts.  They run on a continuous loop from the ground to the top floor of a plant.  They travels at about 75 feet per minute.  Affixed to the belt are small platforms for your feet, “the size of that placemat,” he said, every 8 feet or so, along with small handholds.  Riding the manlift requires reaching with both hands for the small handle in the center of the belt and stepping onto the platform over an opening in the floor.  You’ll ride it up (or down) to the floor that beckons you and then you “step off”—all while the belt if moving.

(Photo credit: NIOSH, Firefighter fatality investigation report, August 2006)

The OSHA regulations that govern manlifts date back to 1974 and are based on a 1969 industry-consensus standard.  They are not only seriously out-of-date, but manlifts installed prior to 1971 do not have to conform to even these out-dated OSHA rules.

Although OSHA regulations are stuck in a time warp, professional organizations such as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) research and develop safety standards and encourage employers to follow them.  ASME has its own safety standard and recommendations for manlifts, the most recent version issued in 2009.

Federal OSHA inspectors have been on the scene at both the ConAgra plant in Alton, IL and the Pepsico plant in Danville, IL.  They are conducting a post-fatality inspection and will determine whether the workplace (or at least the area where the fatality occurred) is in compliance with OSHA safety and health regulations.   But with outdated rules on the books, and contributing factors that are not addressed at all by specific OSHA standards, we’re missing a real opportunity to learn how to prevent fatal falls from manlifts.

Because people aren’t robots, the wisest and most effective safety interventions will focus on eliminating or controlling the hazard at its source.  People get rushed.  People feel pressure.  People get dizzy.  People want to work fast and please their boss.  People feel distracted.  For those reasons, employers should not rely heavily on interventions like safety stickers or simple reminders to “be careful as you step over that hole in the floor and the five stories below it.”  I wonder whether the safety programs of these very large firms rely heavily on “worker behavior” techniques—-”be safe,” “be careful,” — or have they instituted higher-order protections that recognize that people are not robots.  Do these firms follow the ASME 90.1 (2009) standards for manlifts?   Besides telling workers to “hold on with both hands” and “step on and off carefully,” what structures are in place to prevent falls from the manlifts?  Comprehensive fatality investigations would examine these and a full-range of other factors that may have contributed to these incidents.   Such investigations could certainly offer answers to “what went wrong” and provide worthwhile ideas for preventing them in the future.

ConAgra, Pepisco and ADM all boast of their stellar workplace safety programs.  Given that all three have had employees die on the job while using belt-operated manlifts, I wonder if they’d consider letting a group of independent investigators examine how their safety program and manlift operations failed Robert Fitch, 51,  Brett Alan Hauk, 51, and Jay Van Buskirk, 47, and their families.  If they’ll open their records, I’ll convene the team.

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