--- title: "Lockout/Tagout Death Clearing a Jam: The Energy Control OSHA Requires" description: A 24-year-old died when a woodchipper activated as he cleared a log jam. OSHA found the lockout/tagout the law requires was not documented or followed. image: https://resources.hunterman.com/hubfs/HCS_Case_File_03_card-1.png --- [Skip to content](https://resources.hunterman.com/hcs-readiness-brief/hcs-case-file-no-03-lockout-tagout#main-content) [![Hunterman Compliance Solutions](https://resources.hunterman.com/hs-fs/hubfs/HCS_Logo.png?width=200&height=49&name=HCS_Logo.png)Homepage](https://hunterman.com) - [Home](https://www.hunterman.com) - [About Us](https://www.hunterman.com/about-us) - [Services](https://www.hunterman.com/services) - [Resources](https://www.hunterman.com/blog) - [Contact Us](https://www.hunterman.com/contact) [Let's Get to Work](https://www.hunterman.com/contact) - [Home](https://www.hunterman.com) - [About Us](https://www.hunterman.com/about-us) - [Services](https://www.hunterman.com/services) - [Resources](https://www.hunterman.com/blog) - [Contact Us](https://www.hunterman.com/contact) [Let's Get to Work](https://www.hunterman.com/contact) ![](https://resources.hunterman.com/hs-fs/hubfs/HCS_Case_File_03_card-1.png?width=1200&height=1200&name=HCS_Case_File_03_card-1.png) Case File # Lockout/Tagout Death Clearing a Jam: The Energy Control OSHA Requires ![Ty Martin](https://7528315.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hub/7528315/hubfs/raw_assets/public/mV0_d-cms-elevate-theme_hubspot/elevate/images/avatar-placeholder.jpg?width=48&height=48&name=avatar-placeholder.jpg) Ty Martin October 20, 2026 *HCS Case File No. 03* ### A Log Jam, a Woodchipper, and the Lockout That Was Never Applied **The setup.** It is a Monday in December 2023 at a sawmill in the rural Southeast. The mill has recently added equipment to push more production through the yard. A log jams in the woodchipper. Anyone who has worked around a chipper, a conveyor, a baler, or a press knows what happens next, because it happens a dozen times a shift: someone walks over to clear it. On this shift it is a 24-year-old employee. Clearing a jam is the most routine servicing task in industry, and it is the exact moment the lockout/tagout standard was written for. **On paper.** Federal law covers this task directly. 29 CFR 1910.147, the control of hazardous energy standard, requires the employer to establish an energy control program and to develop, document, and utilize written procedures for the servicing and maintenance of machines where the unexpected energization or start-up of the machine, or the release of stored energy, could cause injury (1910.147(c)(4)). Each procedure must spell out the steps for shutting down, isolating, blocking, and securing the machine, the steps for placing and removing lockout devices, and the requirements for testing the machine to verify the lockout is effective. The standard then prescribes the sequence every time (1910.147(d)): notify affected employees, shut the machine down, isolate it from every energy source, apply lockout or tagout devices to each isolating device, relieve or restrain any stored energy, and verify that isolation and de-energization have actually been accomplished before anyone puts a hand in. Authorized employees must be trained to recognize the energy sources and to carry out the procedure, and the employer must certify that training (1910.147(c)(7)). Separately, 29 CFR 1910.219 requires that chains and sprockets on mechanical power transmission equipment be enclosed. None of this is guidance. It is the minimum the law sets for clearing a jam. **In the field.** On December 18, 2023, the woodchipper activated while the 24-year-old was clearing the log jam. Co-workers tried to help, and emergency personnel took him to a nearby hospital, where he died of his injuries. OSHA's investigation found, in the agency's words, that the company had added new equipment to increase production but did not mitigate potential hazards before allowing workers to service and maintain the new equipment, and that it failed to document and follow hazardous energy control procedures. OSHA also found that lockout/tagout devices were not applied to isolate all energy sources, that employees had not been trained or retrained on effective energy control, that training records were not maintained, and that the chain and sprocket on the chipper's outfeed were not enclosed. The company's name is omitted here by editorial choice; the citations are a matter of public record. **Why those missing pieces are fatal, not clerical.** A woodchipper is a rotating mass fed by powered rollers and chains. Once a jam is cleared, nothing about that machine wants to stay still: the drive is still connected to its energy source, the controls are still live, and stored energy in the system is still waiting for a path. The only thing standing between a person's hands and that energy is the lockout: the isolating device opened, a lock applied under the control of the person doing the work, stored energy released, and a test confirming the machine cannot start. Each of those steps is a physical barrier. A written procedure tells the worker which isolating devices exist on this machine and in what order to use them; without it, the worker is guessing on equipment the mill had just installed. Training is what makes the procedure executable under production pressure. A guard on the outfeed chain and sprocket is the barrier that remains when everything else is forgotten. When these are missing, the task is no longer "clear the jam." It is "put your body in the path of a machine that is still armed." Clearing a jam is routine work. On the record, the energy was not controlled. **The finding.** OSHA announced its citations on July 2, 2024. The agency cited one willful violation, for failing to document and follow hazardous energy control procedures to prevent caught-in and struck-by hazards on machines serviced by employees. It cited one repeat violation, for failing to apply lockout/tagout devices to isolate all energy sources, a violation OSHA said it had previously cited at the same operation in a 2022 inspection, when the business operated under a different name. It cited two serious violations, for not training or retraining employees on effective energy control and for not enclosing the chain and sprocket on the chipper's outfeed, and one other-than-serious violation for failing to maintain lockout/tagout training records. Proposed penalties totaled $267,327. The accountability angle sits in the repeat classification: the agency's record shows the same lockout gap had been identified at this operation the year before the fatality. OSHA's acting area director put it plainly: workers handling any machinery may be seriously or fatally injured when all sources of energy are not removed. The company contested the citations on July 17, 2024. The case reached a final order on July 10, 2025, and OSHA's enforcement record now shows one repeat, two serious and two other-than-serious violations, with penalties of $186,670. The willful classification did not survive to the final order. The repeat did. **What a field-verified audit catches.** None of the findings above require an investigation to surface. They surface in about ninety seconds at the machine, before anyone is hurt, with questions a field auditor asks every day. Show me the written energy control procedure for this chipper, not the generic program, the machine-specific one that names each isolating device. This equipment was installed recently; show me when the procedure was written and when it was last used. Pick an authorized employee on this shift: walk me through locking this machine out, and show me your lock. Where is the stored energy on this machine, and how is it released? Show me the training certification for the people who clear jams here, with names and dates. Show me the periodic inspection of this procedure, which 1910.147(c)(6) requires at least annually. And simply: where is the guard on that outfeed chain? Each question has a physical answer. Either the control is there and the person can demonstrate it, or it is not. **And it has to be an independent look.** The people least able to see this gap are the people who wrote the program and clear the jams every day. Familiarity is the blind spot. The crew knows the chipper; the supervisor knows production is up; the program on the shelf still says "lockout/tagout" in the table of contents. A paperwork review passes it, because the program exists. The field shows it, because the machine-specific procedure for the new equipment does not, the locks are not on, and no one can produce the training record. An independent verification is not a judgment on the crew. It is the only reliable way to find the difference between what the program says and what the machine looks like at two in the afternoon on a Monday. **The cost.** The human cost is a 24-year-old who did not go home, and co-workers who tried to help and will carry that day. The financial exposure runs well beyond the $186,670 in final penalties: wrongful-death litigation, the workers' compensation claim and its effect on premiums, legal fees through the contest and abatement process, a repeat citation on the public record, an experience modification rate that follows the company into every bid, and the prequalification questionnaires that ask about fatalities and willful or repeat citations for years afterward. For a contractor, a single repeat or willful citation can cost more work than the penalty ever will. For an operator, it becomes a question from the board. **The takeaway.** The honest question for your own operation is not whether you have a lockout/tagout program. You do. The question is whether the machine someone will service tomorrow has a written, machine-specific procedure, whether the person who clears the jam can demonstrate it with a lock in their hand, and whether anyone outside the crew has verified that in the field since the last piece of equipment was installed. Do what your program says you do, and what OSHA asks you to do. Then have someone independent go to the machine and confirm it. Talk to us about a field-verified audit of your hazardous energy control and HSE programs. → [Our Services](https://www.hunterman.com/services) · [Contact HCS](https://www.hunterman.com/contact) · [More Case Files](https://www.hunterman.com/hcs-readiness-brief/tag/case-file) Want to know where your program stands before an operator's auditor does? [See how we support contractors.](https://www.hunterman.com/contractors) Get every HCS Readiness Brief and Case File in your inbox — one email a week. 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