21.02.2012

Fatal truck mount incident

A fatality has occurred this morning in Perth, Australia, after a long jib failed on a large truck mounted lift.

The lift, owned by rental company Aussie Pickers, was being used to prune a large tree on the south side of the city. When something caused the jib to break or ‘unpin’ from the main boom, dropping the two men in the platform.

Police reports say that the men were wearing safety harnesses, however one of the men, Daniel Nass, 47, landed on the roof of a car port and died at the scene. The other survived, with relatively minor injuries.
Please register to see all images

The scene of the accident

Given the way the failure occurred, the operators would have fallen some way with the jib, regardless of the length of their lanyards. Police and WorkSafe are both investigating the incident.

Aussie Cherry Pickers runs two large Italmec truck mounts, a 42 metre and a 60 metre. It looks as though it is the 42 metre unit that was involved in this unfortunate incident.
Please register to see all images

The jib appears to have parted from the lift

Please register to see all images

Detail of the jib failue point

Vertikal Comment

Before anyone jumps to any conclusions with this incident, few facts are known at this time. Pruning large trees can be treacherous, should a badly cut limb catch up or strike the platform for example. There is also a tendency within an urban area to cut limbs in smaller chunks and take them on board. This lift only has 250kg lift capacity and with two men and their equipment on board was probably at or close to its safe limit?

What we do know is that the men fell from a height of around 18 to 20 metres, and that the harness and lanyard saved one man while the other died. This could be for a myriad number of reasons, including a lanyard that was too long, or that had not been attached, or a failure in the lanyard or anchor point?

WorkSafe has a good record of conducting swift, yet thorough investigations and then sharing the information with all interested parties, so hopefully any lessons to be learnt here will be published in the near future.

UPDATE November 16th 2012

WorkSafe WA has now confirmed that the failure was related to welding issues in the lower fishplates on the jib basse area. It has ordered a radiographic inspection of all units. See recall news report