Man escapes injury after pig shed plunge
A worker escaped serious injury after he plunged 13ft through a shed roof and landed in a heap of pig manure.
The man had been working for Solar Fit PV fitting solar panels to the fragile roof of a pig shed at an east Yorkshire farm when the accident happened.
York Magistrates’ Court heard he was on all fours cutting rails for the panels when he suddenly heard a crack and the roof gave way.
The worker landed, still on his hands and knees, on a soft layer of animal waste on the concrete floor below – and luckily managed to escape serious injury.
The man, who does not want to be named, suffered a radial fracture to his left elbow and bruising to his legs. He has since recovered and found work elsewhere.
However, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecuted Solar Fit PV on Thursday (9 May) after investigating the incident at Rotsea Carr Farm in Cranswick, east Yorkshire, on 23 July 2012.
York Magistrates’ Court was told that three days earlier, Solar Fit had taken measurements and started the installation of 100 solar panels on the roofs of two large pig sheds.
On the morning of 23 July, the farm owner spoke to the firm’s director on site because he was unhappy with the way they had been working on the shed roof.
He warned that the two roofs were fragile and no work should take place without using crawl boards, which he made available.
HSE found Solar Fit took no action as a result of this advice and both the director and the inexperienced employee carried on working unsafely on the roof. The director then left the site and instructed the man to level the rail already on the roof and chop further rails for the panels.
The worker was continuing with the task unsupervised when the roof collapsed beneath him.
HSE found no precautions had been taken to prevent falls through the fragile roof and there was no edge protection along the ridge or to the left of the roof.
Solar Fit PV, of York, was fined a total of £6,000 and ordered to pay £6,585 in costs after admitting two breaches of the Work at Height Regulations 2005.
After the hearing, HSE inspector Andy Denison said: “This worker was extremely fortunate not to have suffered more severe injuries in a fall of 4m. It could even have proved fatal.”
The HSE said falls through fragile roofs and rooflights account for about 22% of falls from height in the construction industry – or seven deaths and about 300 major injuries a year.