A construction worker is dead following a fatal accident at a Corpus Christi refinery site Monday afternoon.
Details of the Fatal Construction Accident
According to KRIS-TV, the 53-year-old Corpus Christi native was working at a refinery tank site on Southern Minerals Road when he was crushed by a large pipe around 2:30 pm on Monday.
The pipe, which was 60 feet long and weighed close to a ton, fell on the man after it came loose from a crane.
Emergency responders attempted to save the man, but he was ultimately pronounced dead at the scene.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will be conducting an investigation into the incident.
Workplace Accident Statistics
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4,383 workers died on the job in 2012 – this translates to roughly 84 deaths a week or nearly 12 deaths a day.
OSHA estimates that construction accidents accounted for 19.6 percent of all work related deaths recorded in private industry.
The majority of the construction accidents are attributed to four accident types:
- Falls
- Struck by Object
- Electrocutions
- Caught-in/between
About the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
OSHA is the federal agency responsible for ensuring that employers and work sites meet health and safety regulations. They are also responsible for investigating any workplace accidents that result in a fatality.
However, even with state partners, the agency has only 2,200 inspectors overseeing 130 million workers – that is one compliance officer for every 59,000 workers.
In 2013, the agency completed 39,228 federal inspections and 50,436 state inspections.
The most frequently cited standard violations by Federal OSHA in 2013 were:
- Fall protection, construction
- Hazard communication standard, general industry
- Scaffolding, general requirements, construction
- Respiratory protection, general industry
- Electrical, wiring methods, components and equipment, general industry
- Powered industrial trucks, general industry
- Ladders, construction
- Control of hazardous energy, general industry
- Electrical systems design, general industry
- Machinery and Machine Guarding, general industry
