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January 15, 2019

Engulfment accident

A temporary worker was fatally injured after falling through a sugar hopper and becoming engulfed by sugar. The fatality occurred in a marine cargo warehouse operation, where bulk
granulated sugar from ships is transported to the warehouse for storage, bagging, and distribution. Sugar clumps often prevented the sugar from flowing freely through a hopper onto a conveyor
belt during bagging. Two or three times per shift, workers would manually break up the clumps. This fatal incident occurred when the temporary worker was breaking up sugar clumps with a pole/
shovel while standing on a hardened sugar bridge at the top of the hopper. The sugar bridge collapsed. As the worker fell to the bottom of the hopper, his legs went through the chute where
he was engulfed by sugar and suffocated.
SOURCE: OSHA

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