Worker killed
after boom collapsed onto motorway near Heathrow Airport.
The Genie Z-135 has been decommissioned after one of its new aerial lift was involved in the death of a worker at a depot close to Heathrow Airport on Wednesday 5th June 2012 just one week after the model was put into service.
The equipment is owned by Kimberly access and is one of 15 Z-135 units delivered by Genie over the last 6 weeks. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has impounded the unit involved and the company immediately withdrew its entire fleet of the units from service as a precaution until the full HSE investigation at the depot has been concluded.
The model is made by Terex Aerial Work Platforms (Terex AWP) and they said in a statement, “Terex, operating under the “Genie” brand name, learned today of a fatal incident involving a user of a Genie model Z-135 boom. Terex AWP is extremely saddened to learn of the accident. Our foremost concern at this moment is for the accident victim’s grieving family. We express our deepest condolences to the family."
"Terex AWP has dispatched technical experts to the scene and is working with experts to support the determination of the root cause of this tragic accident. We will also fully cooperate with authorities during their investigation to understand the cause of the accident."
The aerial lift was in the middle of standard safety and operation inspections at Genie’s depot in Iver when the equipment malfunctioned and overturned. The main boom crashed down onto London’s main ring road and landed on the hard shoulder of the M25. The deceased was the Iver depot’s foreman, a skilled and highly qualified engineer with several years experience working in the sector. Police confirm that the unnamed man was wearing all the correct safety equipment and was harnessed to the machine’s boom when it collapsed onto the motorway.
This latest accident once again underlines the dangerous nature of the construction industry and fatalities continue despite both government regulations focused on safety and strict industry oversight. And with the HSE investigation still ongoing it is unclear whether who is responsible for this accident but construction site lawyers stress that they have never been involved in a case where negligence of some kind was not involved. What this means is that individual companies are not following heath and safety regulations closely enough and this new accident should make all companies reassess their heath and safety policies and to ensure that they are being implemented completely on a daily basis.
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