Moisture caused electronic failure
THERE were no witnesses to the accident which saw Bruss employee and mother of two, Louise Martin ( 42) get trapped in an electronic gate of the factory on Saturday, January 31st 2016 around 6am, Sligo District Court was told.
An inspector with the Health and Safety Authority said the mechanism of the rolling electronic gate which Louise was opening, gate one, had malfunctioned due to a build up of moisture and failed to stop when she tried to turn the key to a neutral position which would normally halt it.
The court heard that Louise was doing an overtime shift and was going to use the money to save for a family holiday and had just been dropped off by her husband, Philip some ten minutes earlier.
An inspector with the Health and Safety Authority which brought a prosecution against Bruss for having an unsafe electronic gate at the premises, agreed that Louise was more than likely to have been in the process of opening the gate, installed in 1996, to let an employee out who had been on the night shift when the gate came across and trapped her causing catastrophic injuries.
Inspector Brian McHugh said Bruss, which has 300 employees, operated on a six day cycle with three eight hour shifts. The factory closed at 2pm on a Saturday and the electronic gates, of which there were three were closed.
On occasions there was overtime on a Sunday for a limited number of employees and on January 31st, Louise came in to work at 5.50am. She has been working 17 years with the company having been promoted to team leader in 2012 and was also a key holder to the gate.
Mr McHugh said Louise met another employee who was coming off the night shift at 6.01 in the factory. He was leaving the factory by motorbike and it appeared Louise had gone out to close the gate after the night shift had left and, having heard the sound of the motorbike coming she went to open it again but became trapped when the gate came across and didn’t stop.
The key pad to operate the gate with a key was located on the road side. It could not be operated on the factory side and a CCTV camera operated from inside wasn’t working on the morning. Her keys were in the key pad when the emergency services arrived.
The employee on the motorbike came across Louise trapped in the gate. Her legs were off the ground and was facing the factory. The employee could hear the gate clicking against her. He ran back into the factory and activated the fire alarm and the fire service was on the scene at 6.30am and the gate was then disabled with the help of Power Right also.
Mr McHugh said the whole system failed that morning. There was no policy for the safe opening of the factory’s electronic gates, he said. It appeared that Louise had reached out through the gate with her right hand and then got pulled into the gate. The gate operated once the key was put into the keypad and was turned in the direction the person wished the gate to go in. It was turned to neutral when the person wanted to stop it.
On the morning, which was inclement, the gate continued to travel across despite the key being put into neutral. It was found that there was moisture in the spring mechanism and when this was dried out later it was found to be functioning correctly again.
In September 2015 the HSA had issued an alert regarding electronic gates and a review was undertaken by Bruss but a risk assessment hadn’t been completed. The new gates now had beams and emergency stop button and were fully compliant.