03.04.2008

Truck crashes into aerial lift

James Kadiri, the supervisor of a team of men working for Fabricom an electrical sub-contractor on Laing O’Rourke’s Paradise street construction project in Liverpool, suffered two broken ribs only minutes after giving a Health & Safety talk to his men.

Kadiri, 43, completed the talk in which he warned about vehicles traveling too fast on site and then went to work in a boom lift. Minutes later a truck crashed into his machine smashing the basket against the wall. He was around 20 ft up in the air at the time.

Kidiri, from Waterloo, said: “I don’t remember much about it. “I saw the lorry coming and figured he must know there was enough space to pass. But his wagon was too tall and the next thing I knew I was sent crashing into a wall.”

Kadiri was working on emergency lighting n a part of the building that spans a service road when he was hit. He claims that had his basket been less than 100mm lower it could have passed under the building, slamming the top half of his body into the wall.

He added: “I couldn’t believe it I only gave the lads a health and safety talk minutes earlier. They said they were concerned about the speed of trucks passing underneath (on the service road). I had all that in my mind and then this happened. I could be out of work for weeks.

“There were people slowing the traffic or stopping trucks that were too big but this lorry was still allowed to pass underneath the cherry picker and that’s not good enough.”

A Laing O’Rourke spokesman said: “Safety is our overarching priority and we are determined to learn from an incident like this. The matter is under investigation and until that is concluded it would be wrong for us to go into more detail.”