Volunteer Fire Depts. Raise Alarm About Feds’ Proposal

• Federal OSHA says it is committed to “assessing and minimizing” the effects of a proposal to modernize rules for emergency responders.
• The fire brigades standard was written in 1980 to cover contractor and industrial fire departments, but that and other standard don’t cover the full range of hazards emergency responders face.
• The proposal would include volunteer departments, but commenters tell the agency that the cost of implementing the proposed reforms could be prohibitive.
• OSHA says the comment period provided information it didn’t have earlier in the rulemaking process. One response could be to exclude volunteer emergency response organizations.
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Sanitation Workers Dies After Being Run Over by Own Truck

• A 54-year-old Queens, New York, sanitation worker was run over and crushed by his own truck after he fell out.
• The New York City Department of Sanitation employee was attempting to make a U-turn on a parkway when he fell from the truck and was run over by the front and rear wheels.
• He was pronounced dead at the scene, and an investigation has begun into the deadly incident.
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Virginia Workers Seriously Injured by High-Voltage Line

• Three Alexandria, Virginia, construction workers were seriously injured after coming in contact with a high-voltage line at a construction project.
• The project is a row of townhomes in the city across the Potomac River from the District of Columbia.
• The crew was using a lengthy piece of metal as part of a system to raise piles of bricks to the townhomes’ exteriors – adjacent to high-voltage lines – and might have made contact with the metal.
• Two of the workers had life-threatening injuries, the third had critical, but not life-threatening injuries, and a fourth was treated at the scene and released.
• Virginia’s Department of Labor and Industry is investigating.
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Massachusetts Man Treads Water for 2 Hours After Falling in Pit

• A Cohasset, Massachusetts, worker was hospitalized after treading water for more than two hours after he fell into a pit of seawater at a worksite.
• When emergency responders arrived at the scene, they found that the employee had gotten himself out of the pit, but was injured and possibly hypothermic.
• Police discovered that the open pit, filled with eight feet of seawater, was neither covered nor marked.
• Investigators from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration have begun a probe of the incident.
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