Company fined after 19-year-old worker dies in concrete mixer in Florida, OSHA says
A Georgia-based concrete pipe manufacturing company exposed employees to unsafe hazards, culminating in the death of a 19-year-old employee, federal safety officials said.
Foley Products Company LLC faces nearly a quarter of a million dollars in fines by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Sept. 20 after an inspection of a Florida job site, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Labor.
In March, a 19-year-old employee and another worker at a Cantonment, Florida, job site climbed inside a concrete mixer to clean, according to the release.
They were using a hammer and chisel to try and chip away at the hard concrete inside the mixer, safety officials said.
When the other worker got out of the mixer, the machine restarted with the 19-year-old trapped inside, according to the release.
The employee sustained serious injuries and died, safety officials said. Their name has not publicly been released.
“Foley Products Company continues to extend our sincere condolences to (the employee’s) family and friends. We are committed to the health and safety of all our employees, customers, and vendors, and look forward to working with OSHA in this regard,” Todd Swenson, senior vice president of Safety Health and Environmental for Foley told McClatchy News in an email.
OSHA inspectors went to the site and found the company “willingly expos(ed) workers to crushed-by hazards by allowing them to enter the mixer without making sure to first follow energy-control procedures,” according to the release.
“The agency also found the company exposed workers to confined spaces hazards by not making sure a safe atmosphere existed inside the mixer before workers entered and by failing to have an attendant ready to retrieve workers safely,” safety officials said.
OSHA said Foley did not make sure the workers were trained in the necessary safety protocols before they went into the mixer, according to the release.
There were 30 workers present at the Florida jobsite when the fatal accident occurred, OSHA said, but the company employs about 500 workers across Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida.
OSHA cited the company for one willful safety violation and six serious safety violations, and proposed $245,546 in financial penalties.
“Foley Products Company’s failure to implement well-known safeguards cost the life of a worker just beginning their adulthood,” OSHA Area Office Director Jose A. Gonzalez in Mobile, Alabama, said in the release. “This preventable tragedy should serve as a reminder of the importance of complying with safety and health standards, as required by law.”
The company has 15 days from the time of the citation to contest the results of the investigation, and Foley has done so, according to the release.
The report will go before an independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, OSHA said.
Cantonment is about 18 miles northwest of Pensacola.
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