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March/April 2023 issue

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Manufacturing and engineering
News

Five dead in recycling plant wall collapse

Open-access content Friday 8th July 2016
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

Five dead in recycling plant wall collapse

Louise Hunt, senior coroner for Solihull and Birmingham, opened inquests into the five deaths on 20 July and immediately adjourned them, pending investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the police.

The five workers were killed when a 4.5 m concrete wall collapsed on them at a recycling facility in Birmingham.

The wall, at Hawkeswood Metal Recycling's Aston Park Road plant, comprised 1.5-tonne blocks. It gave way just before 9am on 7 July, causing tonnes of scrap metal behind it to fall on top.

Two ambulances, an air ambulance, a hazardous area response team and an emergency planning officer were sent to the scene. West Midlands Fire Service also deployed its Technical Rescue Unit, equipped with heavy lifting and cutting apparatus.

The five men were pronounced dead at the scene, while a sixth escaped from the debris with only a broken leg.

The victims, four Gambians and one Senegalese, all holding Spanish passports, were working at the site, which employs dozens of staff, when the accident happened.

The five bodies were recovered from the scene after a two-day operation by emergency services.

Detective superintendent Mark Payne, of West Midlands Police, said the joint investigation between the HSE and the police aims to establish why the wall collapsed.

Payne said: "Clearly we are investigating, together with the HSE, whether there are any issues of negligence or malpractice that have contributed to that wall falling down.

"You can imagine it's a very difficult and complex scene and we're working to try to understand exactly how that wall came down."

Payne's colleague, detective inspector Harry Harrison, said: "Documentation has been seized from the company offices and statements taken from those on site at the time. Liaison with the Crown Prosecution Service has commenced."

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 UPDATED: London council fined £500k after worker sawed leg to the bone

Friday 8th July 2016
Southwark Crown Court heard that George Ball, 58, who was a roadworker for the council, was clearing a blocked drain in a residential street in Romford on 2 March 2015 and needed to cut back trees above the ditch containing the drain.Ball was using a hand-held petrol-driven Stihl cut-off saw with a rotary blade to lop branches when the blade jammed in the wood. As he pulled it free, the blade glanced across the upper part of the his left leg cutting through to the bone. He needed surgery and 60 stitches, and also sustained muscle and ligament damage.
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 UK fatality rate still on plateau, says HSE

Thursday 7th July 2016
This latest fatal injury rate is 7% lower than the five-year (2010-11 to 2014-15) average rate of 0.52 per 100,000 workers (155 deaths).These figures indicate that the downward trend of workplace deaths – which has more than halved over the last 20 years – is levelling off, the HSE said.The 2015-16 statistics, which cover the 12 months from 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2016, are provisional and will be finalised in July next year. This means that the figure of 144 could change.
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 *UPDATE* Worker killed by falling boxes at fish wholesalers

Wednesday 6th July 2016
On the day of the accident a ship delivered frozen fish to Interfish’s Plymouth factory. The shrink-wrapped pallets (each weighing approximately one tonne) were moved by forklift into one of the company’s cold stores.  A stack of pallets collapsed after one of the forklift truck drivers noticed it was unsteady and tried to stabilise it by pushing it backwards. No one was injured in this initial fall and three employees were sent into the cold store area to tidy up the fallen boxes.
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 Worker killed by falling boxes at fish wholesalers

Wednesday 29th June 2016
Tomas Suchy, 22, was tidying away boxes of frozen fish that had collapsed in a cold store at the company’s warehouse in Plymouth on 18 October 2013. As he was doing so, another stack of boxes collapsed and struck him. He died from multiple and severe injuries.  The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found there was no safe system of work, staff were not instructed how to store pallets and there was no written procedure for dealing with falls of stock.
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  Morrisons’ £3.5m fine is ‘a warning to all employers’, says council

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 IOSH launches new five-year strategy

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 Risk & Compliance software provider collaborates with HSE and Costain to improve risk management on worksites

Friday 17th March 2023
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 Dyson lands £1.2m fine after worker escapes more serious injuries

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