Finding into death of Kristian David Reinertsen
Deceased
Kristian David Reinertsen
Demographics
79y, male
Date of death
2021-12-09
Finding date
2026-08-21
Cause of death
Crush injuries sustained in workplace incident
AI-generated summary
Kristian Reinertsen, 79, died when a 575-kilogram water tank crushed him while helping to unload it at a customer's property. He was enlisted as an unpaid helper after the original crew became unavailable. The coroner found that Polymaster (the tank manufacturer) had permitted untrained lay people to manually handle large water tanks despite knowing the risks—a similar injury had occurred just three months earlier in September 2021. Although Polymaster developed new safety procedures following that incident, these were inadequately communicated to the truck driver and not followed during delivery. The driver was unaware of the procedures and lacked the required safety equipment. The coroner concluded the death was preventable and noted that industry standards require predominantly mechanical handling for large items. Polymaster has since implemented winch-assisted unloading. The coroner recommended that Polymaster explicitly prohibit untrained personnel from involvement in manual handling of large water tanks.
AI-generated summary and tagging — may contain inaccuracies; refer to original finding for legal purposes.
Error types
Contributing factors
- Polymaster permitted untrained lay people to manually handle large water tanks
- Prior knowledge of crush risk from September 2021 incident
- Inadequate safety procedures and implementation
- Poor quality driver training
- Driver unfamiliar with procedures
- Procedures not followed at delivery
- Safety equipment unavailable (breakdown triangles missing from replacement truck)
- Absence of mechanical handling equipment
Coroner's recommendations
- Polymaster should update its Safe Work Method to specify that customers and other non-trained personnel should not be involved in the manual handling or offloading of water tanks due to the foreseeable risk of serious injury or death
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