Crushed

It takes a minute for the mind to make sense of this photograph, which 1st appeared to me to be an abstract image, but the accompanying news report reveals that the 40' orange shipping container fell 200' to the ship's deck and killed longshoreman Steven Nicholas Saggiani, 47, at the Port of Long Beach, California, on Thursday. Crushing accidents are all too common, even excluding traffic accidents, as this list of recent fatalities indicates:

• 5/22/08 A 49-year-old man died after he was pinned beneath a metal bin filled with rocks in Anaheim, California.
• 3/9/09 Larry Cantrell, 61, was crushed by the compactor of his side-loading recycling truck in Eugene, Oregon.
• 8/20/11 Tuan Phan, 49, was crushed by a circular knitting machine in Garden Grove, California.
• 1/28/11 Delmas Ramsey, 20, was killed inside a cement crusher he was attempting to unclog in Clermont, Florida.
• 5/23/11 Pat Marino, 73, was crushed to death by a 3,500lb winch in Winthrop, Massachusetts.
• 6/27/11 Kyle Helton, 22, was crushed by part of a petroleum pipeline in Lufkin, Texas.
• 6/23/11 Allen Rommell, 48, was killed while welding an industrial tank in White Lake, Michigan.
• 8/30/11 Henry LaFlore, 58, had his head crushed by a press in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• 12/6/11 An unidentified man was killed when a 3,000lb tortilla maker fell from a forklift as it was being moved in Palm Springs, Florida.
• 12/7/11 Annette Lujan, 48, was crushed to death by an elevator* at Cal State in Long Beach, California, where she was a student.
• 12/14/11 Suzanne Hart, 41, was crushed by the elevator in the 28-story office building where she worked in New York.
• 12/20/11 Annette Goode, 53, was killed by falling bales of paper while sweeping at a recycling plant in Dayton, Ohio.
• 1/10/12 Brady Perkins, 47, was crushed by a press machine as he worked at a sign-making company in St. Louis, Missouri.
• 1/16/12 Lucio Valderrabano, 40, was killed by a 700lb bale of hay at a mushroom processing plant in Avondale, Pennsylvania.

To end on a happier note, 40-year-old David Beers, owner of Eaton Mountain Ski Area in Skowhegan, Maine, was run over by his 18.000lb snow-grooming machine (photo here) last month and survived with only a dislocated ankle and a broken jaw.

*I've done a 2-part post about elevators here and here.