Posts tagged "Worker injured"

The operator of a crane at the Seattle shipyard, Vigor Industrial, was injured earlier this week. His injuries were due to the collapse of the crane he was operating. It, along with the man, ended up with the water.

This work accident comes on the heels of a fatal accident that occurred at the site earlier this month. In a previous post we wrote about the worker's death after a fall from scaffolding at the Harbor Island location, formerly home to Todd Pacific Shipyards.

BNSF Railway Co. has been ordered by U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to pay a current employee $300,000 to cover back wages, attorney's fees and damages the Seattle woman accumulated when she reported she was injured on the job and was suspended without pay.

Employed with the company since 2004, throughout the years she has held a variety of positions including switchman, conductor and brakeman. At the time she was injured, in November 2008, she was working in the Balmer freight yard. The injury occurred as she disembarked a train that was slowly moving through the yard. When she jumped, she twisted her knee.

Several attacks by inmates on prison guards and other workers in Washington have national correctional experts urging correctional facilities to find solutions to improve the safety of workers. When a prison guard was killed at the Monroe corrections facility in Washington earlier this year, the National Institute of Corrections suggested that facilities decrease the length of time of a worker's shift as well as encouraging officers to wear alarms and carry pepper spray.

The solution to decreases a worker's shift from 8.5 hours to 8 hours was designed to eliminate a worker's lunch break so that guards were not left alone while monitoring inmates. Several Washington prisons have implemented the new safety measure in order to better protect employees. However, Clallam Bay Corrections Center has yet to implement the suggestion, and at the end of June, a worker was injured by an inmate while one of the prison guards took a lunch break.

A former crane operator was left permanently disabled four years ago after a workplace accident in Bellevue, Washington. The man still struggles with the physical pain from his injuries and is now suing for damages after learning that the construction site accident may have been prevented.

The accident occurred on Nov. 16, 2006, in downtown Bellevue. The man was operating a crane during the construction of the Tower 333 building when the crane suddenly collapsed between the Pinnacle BellCentre and Plaza 305. A 31-year-old man who was living in the Pinnacle BellCentre was killed in the construction accident and the crane operator was seriously injured.

The injured worker filed a lawsuit against a Seattle-based general contractor and a Seattle-based engineering firm claiming the crane collapse could have been prevented if the two firms would have properly communicated the dangers of the crane's steel base. After the collapse, investigators discovered that the crane's steel base could not properly support the weight of the crane.

Three Seattle-based Burlington Northern Santa Fe employees were killed last week when the van they were riding in was struck by a freight train in Washington State. The tragic collision between the van and train has devastated the BNSF community, and authorities are investigating the accident in order to determine what caused the fatal crash.

According to reports, four BNSF employees had left a rail yard in South Kelso, Washington, after their shift ended on Mar. 23. All four men were heading back to Vancouver for the evening in a large van. As the van was driving through a private railroad crossing off of Talley Way shortly after 4:30 p.m., the vehicle was suddenly struck by a northbound train. The crossing was not equipped with lighted signals, but stop signs and crossing signs were visible.