24.01.2011

Fatal boom tip in Oz

Sadly we have to add another negative story to the gloomy start to the week in terms fatal accidents. The New South Wales Ambulance Service has issued a statement that says “A young man has fallen to his death after a cherry picker toppled over in north-west Sydney this afternoon.”
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The boom went over sideways

We understand that the man, aged 27, was painting the balcony guardrails on a block of apartments in the Meadowbank district of Sydney, when the lift overturned. He was working at a height of around seven metres at the time and the ambulance service says that he was dead when paramedics arrived.

The lift a locally built 60ft/20 metre Snorkel self-propelled boom, was working in a car park on the side of the building where there was a slope and a steep drop and that it may have been this that caused the tip. A bulletin from the NSW Police has said that the man was ejected from the platform, suggesting that he had not been wearing a harness and lanyard.

WorkCover is investigating the accident

UPDATE
We have now been sent a photograph which confirms the police report that the man was thrown from the platform. The photographs also indicate that the lift went over sideways - something that is very rare, although it is possible that the superstructure slewed 90 degrees when it hit the ground.

The fact is that he appears to have been driving with the boom fully retracted and fully elevated - the least stable position for such a machine, add a slope to this and little weight in the platform and this can happen.

Vertikal Comment

This is a black start to the week with reports on three fatal crane or work at height fatalities, and another two crane fatalities in India, which we have yet to report on, all of which could have been easily avoided.

In this case it sounds as though a spider lift may have been a more suitable machine for the job with its ability to level up on slopes? Boom lifts are though relatively ‘forgiving’ when it comes to slopes, at least in comparison to scissor lifts.

As a result some users take their ability to work on slops as a given, when the vast majority of boom lifts specify that they can only work on firm level ground.