Date of incident: September 2015
Notice of incident number: 2015160530189
Employer: Sawmill

Incident summary
At a sawmill, an apprentice millwright was repairing a chain drive on a lumber sorter bin. A rail-mounted stacker operated by a stacker operator travelled toward the worker and crushed him against the sorter bin, resulting in fatal injuries.

Investigation conclusions

Cause

• Worker was struck and crushed by energized stacker. An adequate lockout procedure was not in place to prevent the stacker from travelling across the front of the sorter bins while repair work was being performed in the area. As a result, the worker was caught between the two machines and sustained fatal injuries.

Contributing factors

• Inadequate communications between workers. Workers and machine operators in this area had no effective means to communicate with each other. Portable radios would have allowed for communication between the machine operators and the apprentice millwright and might have prevented this incident.
• Lack of high-visibility clothing. The employer had no policy requiring the use of high-visibility clothing around the stacker and did not provide its millwrights with high-visibility clothing.
• Non-functional warning device. The audible warning device on the stacker to indicate movement was not working. The worker might have been warned of movement if the warning device had been working.
• Lack of supervision of work activities. At the time of the incident, the workers involved in the incident were not effectively supervised. There was no lockout of the stacker or communication between the workers. Effective supervision could have prevented these deficiencies and might have prevented this incident.

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