A Bay of Plenty sawmill has been ordered to pay more than $250,000 in fines and reparations after a worker lost a finger while doing maintenance on a machine. <\/p>\n
The Pukepine Sawmills worker’s hand came into contact with a rotating edger drum in September 2022, leaving him with “life-changing” injuries. Edgers use fast-spinning blades to trim rough edges off timber after it is cut from a log <\/p>\n
The worker lost his middle finger, part of his ring finger, and “narrowly avoided” losing his thumb and index finger. <\/p>\n
A WorkSafe investigation found the machine’s guarding and safety controls “did not adequately prevent access to hazardous moving parts while the equipment was slowing down”.<\/p>\n
It found the edger drum could continue to rotate for around 15 minutes after the power was switched off. <\/p>\n
At the Tauranga District Court, Pukepine Sawmills was ordered to pay $34,300 in emotional harm reparation and $5,712.95 in consequential loss reparation. <\/p>\n
It was fined $210,000 and must pay $5000 in costs. <\/p>\n
WorkSafe regional manager Nigel Formosa said the case showed that turning off power to potentially dangerous machinery was not always enough. <\/p>\n
\u201cBusinesses must identify all sources of hazardous energy, including momentum and run-down time in machinery, and ensure workers cannot access danger zones until equipment has come to a complete stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Formosa said effective machine guarding was the most reliable way to prevent serious harm. <\/p>\n
“Where workers need regular access for maintenance or servicing, businesses should consider engineering controls such as interlocked guards, guard-locking systems, or other measures that physically prevent access until machinery is safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including why a summer of cyclones could be on the way, and 911 audio shows confusion in the wake of a botched execution. (Source: Breakfast)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Bay of Plenty sawmill has been ordered to pay more than $250,000 in fines and reparations after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[138,67,1122,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-629937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-business","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-employment","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}