Carpenter Impaled On Steel Dowel

A carpenter building a wall form for concrete died when he fell onto a steel reinforcing dowel that was sticking straight up out of a concrete footing.

He and a fellow worker were standing on a scaffold they had built about four feet above the ground. They were trying to push a plywood panel into position. The platform was slippery from rain. The victim fell into the excavation and landed on the vertical steel rod protruding from the concrete footing they had previously built.

Two fellow workers jumped into the excavation and lifted him off the steel dowel. He was hauled out of the excavation by rope, put on a stretcher and taken by ambulance to hospital.

If the steel reinforcing bars had been capped, this fatality might have been prevented. If the scaffold had been wide enough to keep the worker from falling on the hazard below, this fatality might not have occurred. First aid training for fellow workers might also make a difference between life and death in an accident such as this. Investigators also recommended safety regulations be available in the various languages of the workplace, and safety meetings be conducted on a regular basis, with mandatory attendance.