Hurt worker not wearing PPE
APalmerston North City Council worker suffered a burnt retina after being caught by a nearby arc flash. The worker, who was not welding at the time, was not wearing appropriate personal protective equipment.
The worker had half a day off work and recovered fully, health and safety manager Selwyn Ponga-Davis says.
“Our team have been reminded of key health and safety requirements, including safety gear when doing this work.”
The “critical-risk near-miss incident” is included in the city council’s latest health and safety quarterly dashboard. It covers April to June this year.
In another incident, a worker started hitting a valve lid with a sledgehammer as another worker was walking away to get some road cones, and an object flicked up and ended up in the second worker’s eye. The injured worker was not wearing safety glasses, as per the then safety control as they were not directly
involved in the activity.
The wearing of safety glasses is now required for all workers in the immediate vicinity of such a task.
The director of a contracting company has been notified that future safety breaches will result in work being stopped. The contractor carried out unauthorised pipe cutting in the
basement carpark at the Civic Administration Building.
They were doing fire safety upgrades but their site-specific safety plan (SSSP) did not specify they would be doing hot works.
A SSSP outlines how work is to be managed safely for specific contracts being provided to the council, PongaDavis
says: “This is part of the prequalification process which external contractors must provide us. Our inspection programme overarches this work.”
The unauthorised work was discovered when a council employee noticed a person not wearing eye protection cutting a pipe in the basement.
Police were called after a man entered Central Library and swore loudly at a team leader and threatened them.
“Aggressive comments about women, children, people in authority, and conspiracy theories were also made,” the quarterly report says.
A member of the public fell and landed on their head after trying to climb over a locked gate at Central Energy Trust Arena when the facility was closed.
The person was taken to hospital and the incident was reported to the police.
A lawnmower operator has been instructed not to mow on slippery surfaces after the mower they were driving slipped down a bank. They had not been following the correct process.