Unfenced and Unsafe
The excavator was left parked immediately adjacent to a 3.5 vertical face cut in unstable material, and despite the fact that the site was a school, it remained unfenced for the duration of the work.
Having abandoned their plan to excise the High School’s waste dump from their jurisdiction, the City of Bunbury felt obliged to ask the Department of Education to remove the offending material and rehabilitate the road reserve on which the trespass had occurred. But the standard of supervision at the site did not improve during these remedial earthmoving operations.
The contractor employed denied having been formally notified that the site was contaminated with asbestos, and as a consequence, failed to instruct their employees to wear suitable protective clothing, and to control dust at the site.
Despite the fact that the earthworks were taking place at a school, no site fencing was installed to exclude the public, and on Friday, January 30, 2004 the site was left in a patently unsafe condition, contrary to Worksafe’s published code of practice for the conduct of excavations.
An inspection of the site that afternoon by local residents revealed a 20 tonne excavator which had been left parked at the top of a 3.5 metre face cut in soil which had been dumped there less than a year earlier.
The condition of the site was reported to Worksafe, but their inspector did not attend the site until the following Tuesday, by which time the work had proceeded, the vertical face on which the machine had been parked was no longer in existence, and the inspector made no enquiry as to the condition of the site at the time of the complaint. A condition which persisted at the school grounds for the duration of that weekend.
This grossly inadequate investigation by Worksafe then allowed the Department of Education to deny that any unsafe condition had existed at the site, since Worksafe had not reported any problem. Another extraordinary admission by the worksafe inspector first contacted regarding the unsafe condition of the site was his ignorance of the Code of Practice published by his own department. This raises questions about whether he was even aware of what to look for, had he promptly attended the site, or had he taken the trouble to gather evidence from witnesses.
The hazardous condition of the machine is obvious from the photographs taken at the time. A house brick (220 x 70 x 100mm) is in the shot for the purposes of scale, and shows clearly that the 3.5 metre unstable face was within one metre of the machines downslope track, and risked toppling onto any passing bystander if the bank gave way.
posted by kwoll @ 3:15 PM
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