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WORKER'S LIFT SHAFT HORROR
Inquest into carpenter’s death plunge hears of safety failures
A CATALOGUE of health and safety blunders led to the death of a man who plunged five storeys down a lift shaft, an inquest heard.
Chris White, a 45-year-old carpenter, fell into the pitch black shaft mistakenly thinking the lift was there. His body was found after his mobile phone had been ringing inside the lift.
The jury at Westminster Coroner’s Court yesterday (Thursday) returned a verdict of accidental death.
But a government health and safety investigation has been launched into a series of allegations that surfaced in the inquest.
The inquest heard:
• the lift had been declared out of bounds by contractors overseeing the refurbishment works;
• none of the lights in the lift, lobby or shaft was working;
• Mr White had received no induction on how to use the complex lift which was only supposed to be used by the fire brigade with a special key.
Mr White was last seen at 3.30pm on August 14, 2007, fitting toilets on the seventh floor of the nine-storey office building, St Catherine’s House, in Kingsway.
His body was discovered in the early hours of August 15 at the bottom of the shaft.
When he did not return home, his wife phoned a colleague and the pair drove from Kent to the site at 3am. After a frantic search, they heard his mobile phone ringing from inside the lift.
Evidence heard by the jury yesterday revealed ?that Mr White had never received a proper training and that anyone using the lift, programmed only for use by firefighters, would be putting themselves at “great danger”.
The lift, one of nine in the building, could not be operated by calling it from other floors like a normal passenger lift, but could only be worked with a firefighter’s key, which Mr White signed out from a security desk on a daily basis during the three months he had been on the site. The primary contractors Structure Tone, responsible for overseeing work in the building, said the lift was supposed to be out of bounds to all workers.
But Mr White’s immediate boss, sub-contractor Paul Ambrose, said they had both been using the lift every day at least 10 times a day and it was common knowledge that it was being widely used.
The inquest was told there were two other functioning lifts.
Westminster Coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe said: “We cannot say for certain but, for whatever reason, Mr White thought the lift was at the floor he was working on. He used the key and because he thought it was there, he probably pulled [at the doors] really hard and the force catapulted him over the edge.” She added: “He wouldn’t have been able to see if it was there.”
The jury returned an accidental death verdict.
n Inspectors from the Health and Safety Executive, the government body which is currently compiling a safety report called Shattered Lives, are investigating the construction site as part of a London-wide safety blitz. Figures so far show 169 injuries to workers on construction sites last year alone.
More than 100 enforcement notices have been served against construction companies in Westminster – the highest in London.
Barry Mullen, HSE principal inspector for London, said: “The level of fatal accidents in refurbishment work in the construction industry is just not acceptable. More can be done. We will be taking strong action where appropriate.” |
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