Anyone engaged in any type of construction work should be properly trained on health and safety to ensure that they do not fall victim to any one of the many hazards on construction sites. Even road construction sites can become dangerous if workers undertake this work without the necessary training.
One worker on a road construction site in Miami in The USA recently died after he fell into a hole on a road construction site, highlighting how dangerous these sites can be.
The worker fell into the hole at the road construction site near a highway on-ramp in Miami near Hollandale Beach.
Apparently the worker was standing on a piece of machinery at the time when he fell into a hole. The worker jumped from the machinery into the edge of trench which gave way as he jumped, causing him to fall 12 feet into the hole and be covered in dirt.
The man’s co-workers tried to rescue him from the hole but weren’t able to reach him. By the time emergency personnel arrived, approximately 15 minutes later, the man had already passed away.
The following excerpt from an article on Miami local website http://miami.cbslocal.com explains further:
The construction is part of the 95 Express, an area where excavation for drainage is being done, according to Florida Department of Transportation.
Robin Kelm, who works closeby, said, “I’ve seen them in all kinds of weather. I was afraid something like this would happen and it did.”
BSO tweeted Friday afternoon that a Fire Rescue Technical Rescue Team is on-scene, trying to get the man out. An hour later, a tweet was sent out that read, “Trench secured, recovery operation commencing.”
While health and safety laws differ from country to country, in Australia a national set of health and safety laws dictate that everyone working on a construction site completes general construction safety training to avoid incidents such as the one above.
Because the construction environment is by nature high risk, workers cannot go into work on one of these sites without a basic understanding of health and safety and what to expect from work on the site. Workers also need to understand what the law says about safety on a construction site, their rights and duty of care as well as the hazards and risks associated with construction work.
When it comes to construction work on a road construction site, the hazards are going to differ slightly from those associated with mining construction sites or the building construction sites, but the general hazards will remain the same, which is why one standardised White Card can be used by workers on any of these sites to ensure that they are familiar with the basics of construction safety.
It is therefore up to the employer to ensure that workers receive any additional health and safety and task specific training that they may require.
The White card training, which is the general construction safety training for Oz, covers such topics as falls from height, work near trenches and excavations etc. Therefore if the worker in the incident above had received similar training, he would likely still be alive today.