Teen's Arm Severed in NY Eatery's Pasta Machine

www.boston.com ^ | April 27, 2014 | Boston.com

[windcliff]

Comment

MASSENA, N.Y. (AP) — A teenage employee at an Italian restaurant in northern New York has severed his arm while cleaning a pasta machine.

A spokeswoman for Massachusetts General Hospital tells The Associated Press that 17-year-old Brett Bouchard was listed in serious condition there Sunday morning.

[Rebelbase]

The old timer brothers at the butcher shop where I worked as a teen were virtuosos with a knife. Between the two of them they had 75 years of experience and were only each missing the tip of one finger.

[MD Expat in PA]

Might have been something like this one:

http://arcobalenollc.com/AMF160.html

That is a very serious piece of machinery, especially the mixer (watch the beginning of the video at the link).

[SgtHooper]

Was he doped up?

[Lazamataz]

I make it a point to go around the plant and take off the lockout tabs.

PROUDLY CLAIMING ZERO DAYS SINCE LAST FATALITY

[MD Expat in PA]

I make it a point to go around the plant and take off the lockout tabs.

I am pretty sure you are joking Laz….at least I hope so : O

I work for a manufacturing company; we have several plants in PA and one in NC and a location in the UK. I am the payroll manager and am in the Human Resources department and as such, I get copied on all the notification on work place injuries and “near misses” as I’m the back up for the benefits person who handles workers compensation claims. And we at my company take safety very seriously. All employees upon hire, no matter their position, even the executives, get a mandatory full day of safety training and we all, even us in office/administrative positions have to attend monthly safety training meetings. And we take the lockout/tag out stuff very seriously as we do if any employee circumvents any safety controls or operates machinery in an unsafe manner and contrary to the written work instructions.

When we have a piece of equipment under repair or maintenance under a lockout, tag out, I along with everyone in HR, all the maintenance personnel, the plant managers and production supervisors get notified via our safety database notification system and a general email is sent out to all those in that plant and another notification is sent out when the work is complete and the tags are removed. If I am walking through the plant, as I often have to do to get from the HR office to the finance and executive offices, if I see someone operating a piece of equipment with a lock out tag on it, I have the right and the obligation to tell them to stop and immediately notify the plant manager. We even have a policy that any employee who has any sort of safety concern and reports it to their supervisor or plant manager, even if that concern ends up being non-founded, that employee will never be reprimanded for it. Any employee can shut down the production line if they see a safety violation without fear of retribution.

And our company, not only in my division but all our companies worldwide under our UK parent company, has an exemplarity safety record. We did have a workplace fatality in one of our Australian plants but it turned out the employee who was killed had a high BAC, was drunk on the job and as a result, we tightened up our drug and alcohol policy. Any reportable work place injury now requires a mandatory drug and alcohol test as does any case of “reason suspicion”.

In this case, I wonder if the 17 year old had ever been properly trained on how to safely clean this machine? What about his co-workers? Was he trained to unplug it before cleaning it, was the on-switch covered like with a Plexiglas shield so that it couldn’t be turned on if accidentally bumped. Was the plug readily accessible? Was he or his co-workers instructed not to bother with unplugging it, just “be careful”? Or as someone else mentioned, at 17 was he “old” enough to even be breaking down this piece of potentially dangerous machinery in the first place? Was horse play involved? Drugs? Alcohol?

In my experience, including working in a grocery store and in the deli for a time using meat slicers and sharp knives and many years of working in retail, using ladders and pallet jacks and cardboard compactors and as a teenager working with my carpenter dad, 99.99% of all work place injuries are completely avoidable. Sometimes a company can do everything they can to keep workers safe from serious injuries but if an employee, even if properly trained, ignores those instructions, they will injure themselves or others.

I am sure OSHA will conduct an investigation. Yes, OHSA is a PITA but they do sometimes serve a good purpose in investigating serious workplace injuries or fatalities.

FWIW, my husband worked for an excavating company. One day the owner’s son was backing up a big excavating machine in the yard and another worker walked right behind it and was crushed to death as the excavator pinned him against a big cinder block wall. The son was devastated as the guy who was killed was also his best friend. OSHA did an investigation and the first thing they looked at, was if the backup warning alarm system was working, and it was. Then they interviewed the witnesses including my husband and they all saw the same thing; the worker that was killed saw the machine backing up, everyone heard the backup alarm and he just ran behind it, mistakenly thinking that he had enough time to clear out of its path. OSHA next reviewed their safety training records and records of previous work place injuries and found the company was not at fault.

The company paid for the man’s funeral expenses and his mother did get his company provided life insurance. But even though he wasn’t at fault, the owner’s son was never quite the same. He had and probably still has recurring nightmares about that day and for a long time wouldn’t operate any heavy machinery. One stupid rash mistake cost a man his life and nearly ruined the life of another.

[Lazamataz]

I am pretty sure you are joking Laz….at least I hope so :O

No. I am not joking. Our plant produces nothing but pollution. Day after day our smokestacks pump out clouds of noxious gases; there's a drainpipe that drains a green toxic sludge into a nearby pristine river; and our open-bed trucks deliver unsecured, leaky barrels of radioactive and deadly poisons.

Those are the only products we produce.

We have a 100% mandatory sexual harassment policy. If you want to work here, Honey, get used to tight skirts and smacks on the ass while you get me come coffee and make me a damn sammich.

We insist our employees test positive for cocaine or opiates every time they are tested. If they fail to test positive, we send them to drug education classes.

And I, the man who came up with this amazing business plan, walk around the plant taking off all lock-outs I see.

[luvbach1]

I used to operate a heavy-duty power paper cutter in our family printing business—one that could cut a stack of paper several inches thick. This machine was manufactured in 1947. It required two large levers, one on each end of the machine, to be engaged by the operator during the entire process of cutting, making it impossible to get under the blade as it came down. Releasing either lever caused the machine to stop.

[Rome2000]

That’s sad.

I was putting up a 25 story high rise for a big GC and one day some guy who was just released from a psych ward nearby walks onto the job site about 4:30 PM, gets a ride up to the sixth floor by the rent a drunk operating the buck hoist, and proceeds to leap off the building, resulting in one dead psycho.

The kicker is that because he was not an employee of the GC or any of the subs, OSHA had no jurisdiction and they couldn’t investigate.

Lots of high fives going on amongst the GC brass, real nice group of fellas.

[stellaluna]

It’s not the same. When you join the volunteer military you takes your money and your chances. This poor kid, who hasn’t sued anybody that we know of or has not claimed workmans’ comp that we know of, is ruined for life and it’s not a joke.

[Drew68]

In the meantime we have members of our military who have lost arms and somehow manage to adjust without the benefit of lifetime worker’s comp or suing anybody.

You lose an arm on active duty and you're getting a check from Uncle Sam for the rest of your life.