Sunterra Distribution, LLC: OSHA inspections and violations

Incident on Nov 11, 2017 (fatal): Employee falls from rack resulting in fatal head injury

At 9:30 a.m. on November 11, 2017, an employee was attempting to retrieve a pallet of lettuce from the second shelf of an industrial storage rack system using a forklift. The pallet broke in the process making it impossible to get the forks of the forklift all the way under the load and creating an unsafe condition. The employees did not want the load to drop so they used another powered industrial truck in an attempt to raise the bottom of the broken pallet. In the process of raising the broken pallet, the second forklifts forks also raised the cross beam that the pallet was resting on causing the rack system to start to come apart. In an attempt to get the cross beam back into place, the employee climbed on top of the forklift then stepped over to the rack system. The employee was holding onto the left cross beam of the rack system. It appears that the right cross beam pulled out of the vertical post it attaches to and struck the employees right hand. causing him to loose his grip and fall from the rack system. The employee flipped over on his way down causing him to strike the concrete floor head first and was killed.