‘Deaths no freak accidents’

BUSINESSES across Greater Dandenong have been reminded to ‘get the basics right’ for workplace safety following a worrying spate of Victorian workplace-related deaths over the past week.
In the latest incident, in Canterbury on Tuesday, a 48-year-old Box Hill foreman was crushed to death when a gazebo he was helping construct collapsed.
The three-tonne gazebo also hospitalised his workmate, who is now in a stable condition.
In a separate incident, a 64-year-old man died last week after falling more than four metres from a second-storey balcony on a house under construction in Wonga Park, in Melbourne’s east.
A WorkSafe spokesperson said preliminary investigations identified inadequate fall protection as a contributing factor.
WorkSafe executive director John Merritt said most workplace deaths and injuries were the result of known risks employers failed to act on.
“Workplace deaths are not ‘freak accidents’,” he said.
“They are, in general, the result of basic safety issues not being attended to.
“There is little difference between the incident that someone walks away from and the one that leaves a family and workmates grieving.”
Mr Merritt said there were no excuses when lives were at risk.
“It is not good enough to say we’re too busy or we’ve always done it this way and nothing’s ever happened,” he said.
“The reality is that dangers can lie just below the surface and may never emerge, but when they do through a combination of factors, the results are devastating.”