A gardener who died after receiving an 11,000-volt shock from an overhead cable may have survived if he’d done a risk assessment, an inquiry has found.
David Anderson, 59, from St Andrews, Fife, was electrocuted while working with his son Stuart at a property in nearby Dunino, on October 14, 2020.
The emergency services were called but Mr Anderson was pronounced dead at the scene.
Now a fatal accident inquiry has said that had the pair carried out a risk assessment before starting work, the death may have been avoidable.
Mr Anderson, who was self-employed, had gone to the private property to carry out work on the beech hedges with his son – the third time he had done the task.
Neither Mr Anderson nor his son thought the electrical power lines running above part of the hedge – approximately five-and-a-half metres above ground level – would pose a problem.
But when Mr Anderson was standing on the fourth rung of an aluminium ladder, the hedge trimmer he was using either touched or came close enough to the powerline for the current to arc, delivering a fatal 11,000 volts.
Tony Blair's defence secretary 'told to burn note which said Iraq war may be illegal'
A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found that the electricity jumped from the power line to the cutting head of the trimmer, then travelled to the ground through Mr Anderson and the ladder.
Following a fatal accident inquiry at Dunfermline, Summary Sheriff Alison Michie noted that HSE guidance on working under power lines recommended that where it was impossible to switch the power off, an exclusion zone be established.
She said Mr Anderson’s familiarity with the work he was doing, may have led him to ‘overlook the danger from the power lines’.
For the voltage of the powerlines in question, HSE guidance recommends setting up an exclusion zone with a minimum distance of three metres.
Sheriff Michie said that while Mr Anderson would not ‘have had the benefit of knowing the measurements of the ladder, hedge cutter and height of the power lines’, had a risk assessment been done in advance ‘it may have alerted’ him to the ‘proximity’ of the power line.
She concluded: ‘Had that risk been identified it should have led Mr Anderson to identify an exclusion zone in the area beneath the overhead lines.
‘This may also have led Mr Anderson to decide to carry out the hedge cutting in the area beneath the power lines in a different way.
‘Carrying out a risk assessment and establishing an exclusion zone might realistically have avoided the accident which resulted in the death of Mr Anderson.’
The inquiry had been told that Mr Anderson and his son had decided to split up and cut the hedge from different sides.
However, the former was discovered unresponsive by his son at approximately 12.20pm and, despite CPR being performed until paramedics arrived, he was pronounced dead at 1.04pm.
A post-mortem gave Mr Anderson’s cause of death as electrocution.
The HSE concluded that, in preparing to come down from the ladder and move to another part of the hedge, Mr Anderson may have brought the cutter back towards his body and lifted it simultaneously, causing it to come into contact with the power lines.
Sheriff Michie closed the inquiry by offering her sincere condolences to Mr Anderson’s family for their loss.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
from News – Metro https://ift.tt/334FecX
0 Comments