On 15 December 2009, a New Zealand Court penalised two companies and a director with fines totalling over $NZ390,000 over an explosion in a coolstore that result in the death of one firefighter and injuries to others. In the comments section of a previous blog article the following questions were put to the New Zealand … Continue reading “Update on New Zealand cool store explosion”
One of the occupations with the clearest need for personal protective equipment (PPE) is that of a firefighter. There are few other industries where PPE has such a high priority in workplace safety but sometimes PPE can still be forgotten. A report on ABC radio and online in Australia on 11 January 2010 shows that … Continue reading “PPE can be a lazy OHS solution”
For those in the Northern Hemisphere at the moment, the risk of heat stress for workers is an extremely low priority but in Australia, even in the cooler parts and suburbia, the Summer temperatures are tipped to reach 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next few weeks. Away from the urban and coastal … Continue reading “Heat stress (in the middle of Winter)”
Reports are coming out of New Zealand that representatives of the Education Department are uncomfortable with being charged under the country’s OHS legislation following a fatal boiler explosion at Orewa College. On 24 June 2009, a boiler exploded at Orewa College in Northland, New Zealand. Initial media reports said that the boiler was being repaired the day after a … Continue reading “Boiler death puts OHS spotlight on New Zealand Education Department”
Australia has many safety awards programs. SafetyAtWorkBlog has reported on some of the practical solutions from the awards and lamented how the prominence of such solutions fades quickly as the mainstream media ignores them. The blog has also shown examples of a hard copy solutions database that existed in Victoria and Australia for a couple of decades. The … Continue reading “A good book of safety solutions case studies”
In late November 2009, the Victorian State Emergency Services (SES) was convicted of OHS breaches over the death of one of its volunteers and was fined $A75,000. The SES has chosen to allocate $A150,000 to a review of its safety management after strong criticism from the Mildura Magistrate, Peter Couzens. In answer to the title of this … Continue reading “How much does poor safety management cost?”
Almost two years ago, two rail workers died in Queensland. According to the official report into the incident: “At approximately 1056 on Friday 7 December 2007, two QR [Queensland Rail] Infrastructure Services Group (ISG) track workers were fatally injured as a consequence of being struck by a track machine (train) at Mindi, approximately 130 kilometres … Continue reading “Big fine for Queensland Rail – big risks in rail”