Almost one third of the 36,000 inspections the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) conducted last year came about because of an accident causing a fatality or serious injury.

At the 90^th annual National Safety Council (NSC) Congress last week, several OSHA inspectors told an audience of safety professionals about some of their most interesting inspections, resulting abatements and penalties, and lessons learned along the way.

Compliance Safety and Health Officer Charles Williams of OSHA's Braintree, Mass. Office, told the audience about the collapse of a cofferdam which was part of a bridge construction project by the Massachusetts Department of Highways. The highway department hired a general machine contractor to build the pier stems for the bridge.

The accident took place mid morning after workers had just finished a coffee break. Five climbed back into a cofferdam to continue work, when the cofferdam collapsed. All the workers were rescued, but one was seriously injured. "He will never work again," Williams told the audience.

Williams said the local fire departments initially responded to the accident at the construction site and the fire chief called the regional OSHA office to alert officers of possible unsafe building practices at the construction site.

According to Williams, the accident was preventable. After some inspection on the materials removed from the site later, it was discovered the contractor was cutting costs and time by using lower grade steel and not following engineers' specifications. For example, one set of steel beams critical to the integrity of the structure was compromised in several ways, including being cut in half during installation and not sized to plan.

Williams said it was agreed that an independent engineering firm would be brought into to analyze the project. It took eight weeks to remove the twisted remains of the cofferdam and thoroughly analyze it. Meanwhile, the steel was removed from the other four cofferdams under construction and replaced.

Williams said the project manager and supervisor on the job were replaced by a new management team. New procedures with checks and balances were put in place to ensure the project would proceed using engineers' specifications.

Williams said officials from the Massachusetts Department of Highways was "horrified" at the incident and he said he's confident that organization has taken the proper steps to ensure such an accident will never happen again.

Compliance Safety and Health Officer Matt Thurlby of the Omaha, Nebraska office told the audience about a fatal electrocution he investigated.

The tragedy occurred when a crew of poorly trained field technicians for a plumbing contractor were trying to locate a communications line underground using a hydro-injection locating system. Because they did not completely understand the signals they were receiving while attempting to find the line inside a PVC pipe, the crew leader thought he had located it when he used a pocket tool to cut into a live 8,000 volt power line.

Thurlby said the victim was burned on most of his body after a 20-foot white-blue flame shot out of the line. The crew leader died after about 18 hours. The remainder of the crew all sustained first- and third-degree burns from witnessing the accident.

After investigating the accident, Thurlby said the company was found to be in violation of several regulations, including failure to properly train employees, failure to have a competent employee on the job and failure to use the proper safeguards at the site. He also noted the crew was in a hurry because they had been trying to locate the same line for about a week and the leader was getting frustrated.

In the wake of the accident, Thurlby said the company implemented an aggressive training program. It brought in the manufacturer of the location equipment to train employees, as well as trainers from the local power company. He added the company ultimately rolled out the same training to all other parts of the corporation.

Michael Moon, Compliance Safety and Health Officer in the Wichita, Kansas office, told the audience about a tangled web of confusion he found when he investigated the death of an employee of a food warehouse, who was killed in a forklift accident.

The accident took place when two workers were being transported in a man-basket on a forklift from one part of the warehouse to another. The employee driving the forklift did not realize he was leaning on a switch that raises the lift, and the lift rose behind him as he drove through the warehouse. While passing through a doorway with plastic curtains, the forklift basket rose high enough that one of the two workers was caught between the wall and basket and fell some 14 feet, sustaining neck injuries. The other worker in the basket, however, became pinned and was crushed to death.

Moon was called in to investigate. The major problem at the warehouse, he soon discovered, was that a total of five companies were involved in different aspects of the warehouse operations, so it was not entire clear to all involved whose job it was to take responsibility for safety and training.

Moon said the investigation turned into a full scale one that went on for months, ending with OSHA issuing numerous citations to all five companies and large penalties to two.

Ultimately, officials from the primary company that owned the warehouse realized that just because they subcontracted warehouse operations to other companies, they still needed to be proactive about safety training and procedures there. Officials from the other companies involved also realized they needed to properly train their employees, and all improved their training and safety programs across the board, improving conditions for some 1,000 employees overall.

Safety Engineer Xavier Aponte of Savannah, Georgia told the audience about a flash fire that took place in the water tank of a yacht undergoing maintenance at a Georgia marine restoration facility.

Aponte said they discovered the accident by reading about it in a local newspaper. Four workers had been cleaning the inside of a fresh water tank using lacquer thinner in buckets with cloth rags. They were lighting the tank with incandescent light fixtures that they held in their other hands while cleaning. About 10 to 15 minutes into the job, one of the workers dropped a light bulb and a flash fire occurred.

The opening to the tank was about 17 inches wide, which fits the definition of a confined space, Aponte pointed out. He also noted that lacquer thinner is a hazardous material and would require atmosphere tests in a confined space.

Aponte also noted that the workers were using the wrong equipment for lighting - they should have been using something that could not cause a fire. The extension cords they were using were also inappropriate.

He also discovered that the company repairing the yacht had not discussed any emergency plans with local emergency crews. When the local fire department responded to the fire, its members will ill equipped to respond properly to a fire in a confined space.

Finally, Aponte pointed out the employees were not properly trained and there were no competent employees present at the time of the fire.

As a result of the investigation, the company designated and trained a competent person and properly trained the other employees. An in-house emergency rescue team was developed and training was provided in the use of atmosphere monitoring testing devices to detect hazardous vapors.