Temp Worker Acting as a Longshoreman Killed at New Orleans [00 August 2017]

Posted by admin on Sep 28, 2017 in Bulletins

While we presently have a victim who remains nameless and while we have no indication of a precise date, we do know that a worker provided by a manpower agency to the non-union stevedoring firm Seaonus Stevedoring, [http://www.seaonus.com] suffered fatal injuries while on the dock adjacent to an as yet unnamed refrigerated cargo ship loading poultry products at New Orleans port last month.

We’ve been made to understand that, while in the process of hoisting an electric forklift truck into one of the ship’s reefer hatches using ship’s gear, the forklift toppled over onto the dock and the mast of the machine (moving horizontally over the dock) came down and fell squarely onto the worker; killing him. The report we received indicated that the fatally injured worker was in his late twenties.

That same report theorized that as the ship’s boom was in motion and still being spotted over the forklift, the hoisting sling was applied to the forklift. That premature application of the sling apparently created a natural slack/drift which was transmitted through the hoist wire, and when the crane operator applied a strain on the gear the forklift was hoisted unevenly and toppled as a result.

Media coverage at New Orleans (the TIMES-PICAYUNE) is notoriously poor in covering accidents that occur on the waterfront. In this case, there was no coverage available to us at all. Notwithstanding, we continue our research into this accident and any further facts disclosed to us will appear within this post as an updated supplement.