Westgate MFG, Inc: OSHA inspections and violations

Incident on Sep 2, 2020: Employee incurs head injuries in fall from storage rack

At 11:45 a.m. on September 2, 2020, an employee elevated himself to the third level rack with a cherry picker and walked over to the location where the pallet had partially fallen through. The employee was not wearing fall protection. The employee was working with a coworker, who was operating a stand-up forklift and was trying to reorient the pallet from underneath one of the beams on the third level of the rack system. After multiple attempts, the coworker inadvertently dislodged the beam that the pallet was resting against. When the beam fell, parts of the rack system the employee was standing on also fell, causing the employee to lose his footing and fall to the concrete surface below. The employee sustained head injuries and was admitted and treated at LACUSC Medical Center for three days. The primary contributing factor to the accident was the lack of fall protection equipment being used while and employee was exposed to a fall of approximately 15 feet. DOSH issued an accident-related citation for lack of fall protection.