The death occurred on August 10 during a repair project by the company Riaux Escaliers, in Bazouges-la-Pérouse, north-west of Fougères (Ille-et-Vilaine). A 70-year-old worker fell while dismantling equipment in this carpentry company, the French leader in made-to-measure staircases. According to the Rennes public prosecutor’s office, the security conditions in which the temporary employee worked “questioned” the gendarmes responsible for investigating this work accident.
According to West France, which revealed the information, the man was dismantling a suction pipe when he fell. The public prosecutor specifies that the victim was “made available” to the company Riaux Escaliers to carry out this mission.
Worker safety “put into play”
“The material findings show that he accessed a small maintenance platform at the top of the boiler, with no guardrails, using an aerial lift, then that he walked to the bottom of the installation without individual or collective protection towards a suction duct that he had to dismantle. He fell as he was finishing his dismantling in a position that put his personal safety at stake,” said the magistrate.
The fall from three meters high generated a “significant traumatic shock, in particular encephalo-cranial”, as revealed by the autopsy. An investigation was opened jointly by the labor inspectorate and the Vitré gendarmerie to try to determine the circumstances of the tragedy. Is the fall the result of discomfort or a lack of safety? “It is far too early to determine the criminal responsibilities in this case”, recalls the assistant prosecutor Sébastien Farges. “However, one can only wonder about the precariousness of the conditions of intervention. The analysis of the labor inspectorate will be decisive in this respect”.