Gemperle Brothers: OSHA inspections and violations

Incident on Aug 31, 2020: Employee's fingers are amputated and lacerated when caught i

At 8:30 a.m. on August 31, 2020, an employee was working for a chicken egg hatchery. Usually, there were two ranchers that worked at this location and floating management. The facility was a ranch with several chicken coops or houses. Inside the coops, chickens were housed in cages. The chickens would lay eggs only when they were in the houses. The cages were opened to allow the chickens to come out and roam freely. The doors were opened only a few times every few months. There was a winch and cable system to open the cage doors, 105 at a time. The combined width of the 105 doors was 420 feet (128 meters). The mechanism to lower the doors consisted of a winch connected to the doors via a 3/16-in. (0.1875-in. or 4.76-mm) cable. The cable went around a pulley and onto the winch. The cable was connected to a bracket that the door for each individual cage was hooked onto. When tension was released from the cable, the doors went down. In this incident, the employee had released the tension in the cable, but the bracket didn't lower. It was stuck somewhere. With his left hand, the employee released more cable from the winch. At the same time, another employee farther away in an aisle pulled a cage door down with his hands. The bracket dropped. The employee's left hand, still on the bracket cable, was pulled into the pulley. Two of his fingers were caught in the pulley. His left ring finger was amputated, and his left middle finger received a laceration. He was hospitalized. The division opened an investigation with the employer on September 15, 2020. At the time of the investigation, the chickens were out of their cages so that they could be administered vaccines. A few additional employees were present. The employee had been trained not to put his hands on the cable. Corrective action was done with retraining to all employees about the potential energy on the cable and a reminder to all to not place hands on the cable or the winch. No violations to T8 CCR were found.