Articles Posted in Industrial Accidents

A lengthy piece published this week in the New York Times tells the sad story of a 2008 industrial accident in Manhattan and the chain of events leading up to it. It is a story of corners cut and the fatal consequences that followed: of an American employer desperate to lower costs, a Chinese supplier making inflated claims for its products and due diligence that was never done.

The fatal accident involved a construction crane that collapsed at a building site on New York’s Upper West Side as a result of a faulty weld on the crane’s turntable. As the Times notes, there has been much testimony at the manslaughter trial of the crane’s owner “about the failed weld… and how the Chinese company was unable to satisfactorily perform a vital weld on the turntable. But little has been said about another aspect of the company: its description of itself was largely inflated or simply not true.”

As the newspaper goes on to report, the Chinese company, RTR Bearing Company Limited, claimed to have a 10-year history of high-end industrial work around the globe and to employ 109 people in two factories and a quality control center. In fact, the company was barely six months old when first contacted by the New York firm that eventually bought its crane, and appears to have been little more than a 3rd party marketer of other Chinese manufacturers’ goods. In an affidavit in a related civil suit, the company’s founder acknowledged that RTR actually employs only seven people, none of them engineers, and “has no factory and does no manufacturing,” the paper reports.

A serious Washington propane explosion last week injured five people and briefly placed a nearby school at risk, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

The Washington industrial accident took place near Mukilteo, in the Greater Seattle area. The news agency, citing a local fire district spokesperson, reported that “a 1,000 gallon tank was being loaded onto a truck to be taken to the construction site when it blew up.” Five people injured in the last were transported to a Seattle-area hospital. Students at a nearby elementary school were confined to their building for a time because of the possibility that debris might still be in the air.

As I have noted in earlier blogs, propane explosions are one of the most common types of industrial accidents in both Washington and Oregon. They are also one of the most readily preventable. Propane is an inherently unstable substance, but with proper procedures the dangers associated with it can be reduced significantly. The laws of Washington industrial accidents and Oregon industrial accidents are designed specifically to encourage people handling this and similar substances to exercise caution.

Early reports that an Oregon industrial accident in North Portland left a worker critically injured have proven to be premature, according to The Oregonian. The newspaper, quoting an emergency services spokesman, reported that it was originally believed an explosion at SiC Processing had left a worker there with life-threatening injuries.

Several hours later it became clear that the victim was expected to make a “full and rapid recovery,” the paper reports.

The fact that the worker’s injuries were not as serious as was originally thought is a relief. But as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigates what the paper reports was a hydrogen blast a number of potential legal questions need to be considered.