A 47-year-old male employee was fatally injured when he became engulfed by sawdust after entering a dust collection silo. The company is a hardwood flooring manufacturer. On the day of the incident, the victim was cleaning the inside of a dust collection silo containing wood dust. The fire department had been called on to extinguish two different fires in the silo a few days prior to the incident; therefore, the wood dust was saturated with water and could not be processed through the conveyor and boiler. After the fires were completely extinguished, the decision was made to clean out the saturated wood dust. It was determined that the cleaning activity was part of a two-person team and was not a normal task for the employees. The employees had cleaned the silo for two days and the incident occurred on the third day. On the day of the incident, the victim used an aerial lift to access an opening 21 foot from the ground on the side of the silo and cleared the debris using high-pressure water.
The other employee began operating a front-end loader to move the wood dust that had been already been removed from the silo. The loader operator saw a cloud of dust appear from the side of the silo in the area where the aerial lift was positioned. The employee lowered the aerial lift to the ground to learn that the victim was not in the basket.
The investigation concluded that the victim exited the lift and entered the silo through the opening to clean. The victim’s cell phone contained videos of him inside the silo. The victim texted his wife a video of himself standing inside the silo on the afternoon of the incident. The video shows large amounts of wood dust stuck to the silo walls above where the victim was standing. While the victim was inside the silo, the saturated wood dust, which had collected on the walls of the silo, collapsed engulfing him. The employees were not given specific cleaning instructions but it was assumed by management that the employees would not enter the silo. Since the employees were not supposed to be entering the silo the employer did not require that the confined space entry procedures be utilized.
