24.01.2011

Fatal scissor accident in Cologne

A scissor lift tipped over last Wednesday on a construction site in the industrial area of Mühlenerft, Cologne killing one of the two men in the platform.

The lift was being used at a height of around 10 metres, by a subcontractor to the cladding contractor on the new 10,000 square metre Sany facility.

Reports say that the platform ‘suddenly turned over’. One man aged 30 managed to grab hold of the building structure and was uninjured, while the other, aged 31, was thrown to the ground.

Colleagues provided first aid to the injured man who was quickly airlifted to a local hospital but later succumbed to his injuries.

Police took control of and locked down the site while an investigation into what happened was conducted. Initial unofficial reports suggest that a pin linking the scissor stack to the chassis may have failed and been the cause of the accident.

Vertikal Comment

This is a very rare and tragic accident, the report on the pin failure may or may not be significant – it is just possible that any such break was caused by the accident.

There are however very few things that can cause such a tip over, which appears to be end to end rather than a sideways fall.

If it was a pin that failed, then it is a very serious situation, the investigators will quickly want to determine if such a failure was down to corrosion due to lack of maintenance or a design or production fault. An expert was commissioned by the local prosecuter was apparently called in to help determine the cause.

One side issue that this accident does raise is the folly of wearing restraint harnesses in a scissor lift. If the two men had been wearing them they would both be dead today. The man who survived did so because he was not tethered to the falling machine.