An Ilderton company has been fined $75,000 after a worker suffered a permanent injury when a concrete culvert fell on top of him.
Geoff Morphew, 38, was working in quality control at Coldstream Concrete on Aug. 2, 2017, when the crane failed, dropping a concrete culvert on his right arm.
He was rushed to hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. His arm had to be amputated.
“The surgeons said if it had been an inch over, he would’ve been dead,” said Sarah Morphew, Geoff’s wife, following the incident.
Surgeons told her that the weight of the nearly 23,000-kilogram slab saved her husband’s life by cauterizing the veins. They told her that her husband would have bled out in “60 seconds” had the pressure of the slab not acted like a “Ziploc bag.”
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“It was a blessing in disguise, I guess, that it happened that way, or else he wouldn’t have made it to the hospital,” she said.
According to the Ministry of Labour, two employees were working in the business’ heavy precast yard, moving three-sided concrete culverts from the bed of a trailer on to the ground using a gantry straddle crane and spreader beam.
The crane had recently been inspected and found to be in good working order. One worker operated the crane from the cab, and the other was on the ground, rigging the culverts to the crane.
The crane operator moved a 23,000-kilogram culvert from the trailer and set it down on the ground. The worker on the ground needed the culvert raised again in order to remove a metal date plate attached to the bottom of the culvert.
The operator raised the culvert about five feet and, while it was suspended, the worker on the ground reached underneath and started to chisel the date plate away.
While doing so, the worker heard a cracking noise and was knocked to the ground by the culvert. He suffered a permanent injury.
READ MORE: Worker at Ilderton concrete product facility pinned under large slab, seriously injured
Later examination of the crane showed it had suffered an unexpected and catastrophic failure.
Provincial law requires employers to make sure that any equipment that is temporarily elevated is properly secured so that it doesn’t fall. The Ministry of Labour said Coldstream Concrete failed to do that. The company pleaded guilty Thursday and was fined $75,000.
The court also imposed a 25 per cent victim fine surcharge as required by the Provincial Offences Act. The surcharge is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.