OSHA is already looking into the accident that involved a high voltage electrical panel
- A contract worker at Tesla’s Texas Giga Factory died after an accident involving electrical panels.
- The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the situation.
- The family of the deceased worker is suing Tesla seeking $1 million in damages.
Accidents happen all of the time but when they occur at a job site and involve a fatality, they tend to raise questions regarding safety. Reports say that Victor Gomez St. died at Tesla’s Giga Texas on August 1. A Journeyman electrician, Gomez was working on electric systems at the site as an employee of Belcan. He died after allegedly interacting with an energized electrical panel.
Gomez was a licensed electrician and was inspecting electrical panels when the accident happened. Austin-Travis County EMS responded to Giga Texas and took him to Dell Seton Medical Center where he was pronounced dead. Now, his family is suing both Tesla and Belcan.
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According to KVUE, the suit seeks $1 million in damages for his death. Evidently, it’s also asked Tesla to preserve all of the evidence surrounding the safety accident. That includes the electrical panel in question along with internal and external surveillance footage. Interestingly, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will want a look as well.
It’s opened an investigation into this whole scenario and says it’ll provide additional details on that once it’s finished. What comes of that could be fines against Tesla or Belcan. As the San Antonio Express-News points out, OSHA has already cited Tesla in California for a “series” of injuries in December of last year.
Those fines amounted to some $38,000. Back at the Texas Giga factory, reports came out last year of other injuries that included concussions, explosions, and even those related to robots. To Tesla’s credit, these reports were only found because the automaker openly reported the incidents to OSHA. At the same time, the obvious preference is for them to not happen at all.
Back in 2020 Tesla pledged the following: “We are expanding our principles of caring for employees to go beyond what traditional automakers offer to create a more holistic focus on well-being, including mental and physical health. We’ve expanded our contractor safety evaluation program more globally to align standard safety practices across all sites. And, we’re adding and improving on-site medical clinics at our Fremont factory, Gigafactory Nevada and Gigafactory Shanghai.”
Clearly, something went wrong at Giga Texas on August 1. Hopefully, more public information will shed light on what that was.
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