Wireco Worldgroup, Inc.: OSHA inspections and violations

Incident on Jan 22, 2008 (fatal): Employee caught in rotating parts of machine

An employee was operating a wire-rope stranding machine when he heard a wire bre ak in an adjacent machine. He ran approximately 9 meters to the back side of the adjacent stranding machine and leaned against the guard covering the machine's rotating parts trying to reach the emergency stop button, which was located on t he opposite side of the machine, where the operator's station was. The guard col lapsed under the weight of the employee, who was a large adult male. The rotatin g parts of the machine amputated one of his arms and crushed his skull, killing him. The stranding machine involved in the accident was 30 to 60 meters in lengt h, approximately 1.4 meters in height, and 1.0 to 1.2 meters in width. It had mu ltiple emergency stop buttons arrayed along the operator's side of the machine a t roughly 3-meter intervals. The machine operator was at his control panel, loca ted at the far end of the machine, and was activating the emergency stop button closest to him at the time of the accident. (The rotating parts of the machine d id not come to an instantaneous stop even though the machine was equipped with a braking system.) The 30-year-old machine was manufactured by the Wire Machinery Corporation of America, which was no longer in business.

Incident on Aug 11, 1989 (fatal): Employee caught between steel plate and crushed

At approximately 6:15 a.m. on August 11, 1989, Employee #1 was discovered deceas ed after working alone in the wire rope mill dept at the east end of Building 17 winding scrap wire onto a large spool from six smaller spools using a scrapper machine referred to as the 66 re-winder. Employee was found pinned between the s pool and the steel plate behind the spool. The clearance between the spool and t he plate was 4 in.