When a serious ski lift accident occurs, you act. The ski patrol moves into motion providing first aid to the accident victims, medical professionals are sought out to administer further aid or advise on the situation and emergency ambulance service is provided to handle the injured. Overall, a high degree of professional attention is given the accident victim.
But what happens in the aftermath? When do we find out what really happened to cause the accident? More often than not, it is days, weeks and sometimes months later. Sometimes we never know the cause.
In the last few years, a portion of services provided by engineers in the ski industry has been to consult in legal actions involving ski lift accidents. The principal objective in providing these services is to determine as precisely as possible: 1. what happened, 2. how it happened and 3. the sequence of events immediately preceding the accident. The purpose of this article is to suggest an overall approach to the post-accident activity of the ski area management personnel after the victim has been cared for.
At The Scene Of The Accident
Witnesses
After first aid and professional treatment have been administered and the victims are on their way to recovery or further aid, the process of witness identification should begin immediately. Who are the witnesses? Get name, address, telephone number, age, description and skiing ability. This should not only be for the people involved in the accident, but also the people nearby and the companions of the person involved.
Rate the competence level of the injured skier, if possible, by asking those companions who are with the skier or had skied with the person involved. Was the skier in ski school that day?
Identify all the people who collided in a loading area or unloading area. If the accident involves a chairlift, identify the people who are in the chair with the injured person and the people in the chair in front of and behind the injured person. Immediately get their names, addresses and telephone numbers, and tell them that you will be in contact with them. Name, address and telephone number of witnesses to the accident are vitally important. Obtaining this should be among the first acts of the staff of the ski area.
Area Staff
Lift attendants and supervisors are generally in the area of the accident scene when loading and unloading accidents occur. In the case of accidents along the line, someone from the ski patrol may be the first person to get to the accident, followed by the lift supervisor. In any event, the first ski area staff person and subsequent staff people on the scene of the accident should be identified. Names, addresses and telephone numbers of these people (including permanent or off-season addresses and telephone numbers) should be recorded.
One of the most important parts of the post-accident investigation procedure for each ski area staff member who is at the accident scene is the preparation of an independent written description of the accident. This should be done prior to departing that day. These people should be placed in separate locations while writing their descriptions of the accident, no matter how long it takes. The basic questions of who, what, where, when, how and why should be answered. Sketches should be provided where necessary, and the sequence of events that caused the accident in the opinion of these individuals should be written down. These independent descriptions should then be placed in the hands of the ski area manager. They should not be given to supervisors nor should they be passed around to the parties involved. Finally, they should not be evaluated by people at the ski area. They should be retained and evaluated by a qualified independent third-party observer.
Location
A major question that arises in investigating accidents is the precise location of the accident. Most people know the general vicinity of the accident. For example, “It occurred on Lift A at the loading area,” or “near tower Number 3.” It can become extremely critical to the independent accident investigator whether the incident occurred three feet into the unloading area or six feet into the unloading area. It may also be important in the case of the person falling out of the chair, whether he fell precisely at the tower, three feet downhill of the tower, or six feet uphill of the tower. Precise location measurements should be referenced along the center line of the lift. That is, so many feet from a specific tower number toward the top, and so many feet left or right from the center line toward the upgoing rope or the downgoing rope.
In the event that a specific chair is involved, the chair number and grip number should be immediately recorded. This information could save many hours of theorizing about what caused the accident. A thorough study of the chair may determine the condition and the part it played. But if you don’t record which chair on a given lift was involved in the accident, it’s almost impossible for anyone to remember one month later.
In the event that a person is immobilized and is on the ground, the precise location where he is immobilized can be vitally important in recreating the sequence of events that occurred to cause the accident. As discussed previously, location measurements should be refernced along the center line of the lift.
If the accident occurred in the loading and unloading area, descriptions should cover the general conditions of the loading and unloading area, what the snow surface is like, lighting levels, the noise level and the time of the accident. Note the proximity of people to the accident scene. Were they nearby? Were they congregated in the area? Were skiers in the immediate vicinity? Were there any possible distractions at the time the accident occurred? Were there trees and bushes near the lift line in case of a person falling from a chair? Could there have been an external interaction by external influences that would not be obviously apparent three to five years in the future.
The accident location should be immediately photographed with a marker to indicate exactly where the accident victim ended up on the ground. The ski patrol should make photographing the scene of an accident a part of their standard operating procedure.
The most important single thing that can be done is a series of photographs of the scene, making it a total panorama of the scene from 360 degrees. Walk around the scene from 360 degrees and photograph everything you see, then photograph it from the ground level to the horizon. These photographs can be more important to the third party observer, who may become the objective expert witness in a courtroom, than any other single bit of information.
When Did It Happen
Recording the “when” information is also of vital importance in the post-accident investigation. Time of day, the date, the weather, temperature, relative humidity, the light conditions —was it a sunny day, clouds, intermittent clouds, was it stormy, were winds high that day, were they gusty, etc.? All of these weather conditions play a part in how a lift operates and how a person interacts with a ski lift. Careful recording of this information can save a great deal of speculation in the future.
Notification Of Authorities And The Press
In case of serious accidents or fatalities, legal notification of authorities is required. Local, state and federal authorities having jurisdiction in the accident are to be notified. In case of fatalities, state police and law enforcement agencies are generally a party to an accident investigation. Another private agency involved is your insurance carrier. The procedure for notification in case of an accident may be spelled out in your policy and should be adhered to inasmuch as these people are part of your organization. They can assess the problems associated with the accident with experience and understanding.
Notifying the press should be a well defined part of major accident procedure. A specific person should be designated as your press spokesman and no one else should contact the press. All interviews should be conducted through this person. There are usually a highly technical set of circumstances involved in a serious accident. To the layman or the nontechnical journalist, this can easily lead to misinformation rather than an accurate report of the accident. Make sure of the facts and then make sure they get to the press.
An overall notification procedure should be established. Priorities, names, addresses and telephone numbers should be a part of the procedure. A well thought-out, organized approach to this aspect of accident notification can save time and aggravation in the future.
Evidence Preservation
The maintenance and preservation of evidence is another important part of any accident investigation. The careless handling of a piece of equipment that is involved in an accident cannot help you—it can be the item that convicts you. In some cases, the critical piece of evidence can be the item that clears the ski area of any negligence in the accident. If this item is lost, misplaced or not identified, no way of clearing the ski area operation could ever be properly determined. The nagging doubt would persist.
Chairs and grips should be identified, labeled, preserved and locked up in a safe place. The same goes for other ski lift parts. In the case of rental skis and ski equipment, the rental should be identified, photographed, then stored somewhere if necessary, for future observation by a third party.
It’s vitally important that every piece of evidence be photographed. All parts should be labeled or tagged and the label should contain the name of the victim in the accident, the date of the accident and what the part is. This label can also be easily photographed. A wire-connecting paper tag can be picked up at most hardware stores and is ideal for this purpose.
Preventing Future Accidents
The preceding describes a method of identifying an accident scene. The purpose behind this: accident identification is to learn the cause of the accident and to prevent a similar accident in the future. When an engineer, as an objective third party, comes to a ski area to investigate an accident, there are two questions which he tries to answer to the best of his judgment and experience:
- How the sequence of events occurred which resulted in the accident. He must put together a logical, rational, defendable sequence of events. He must be able to eliminate the possibilities of other sequences occurring and defend that position as well.
- The second and key question is what was the basic cause which initiated the sequence of events? Did a ski tip catch? Did a chair strike a tower? Did a brake prematurely release? Did a person ski into a loading position prematurely?
Identifying that basic cause is the objective of all the information that is gathered and described in this article. The only way this basic cause can be determined is if the accident can factually be reconstructed. The only way anyone can do this is if you have a detailed procedure for providing accident information.
All of the information outlined here is an essential part of accident investigation and must be secured within 24 hours of an accident. A substantial part of it should be secured prior to the conclusion of the business on the day of the accident. A check list can be constructed from the information in this article. By doing this you can save untold man-hours in the future. You may also prevent a future accident.
No one wants a major accident to happen. When people and machines get together, unfortunately, accidents do happen. The best place you can be when an accident happens is with a well-organized procedure to handle the information gathering that’s necessary to precisely explain the two basic questions, how it happened and why it happened.
NOTE: Sam Bonasso is president of Alpha Associates, Inc. of Morgantown, W.V., and is Administrator of the B77.1 ANSI Program for NSAA.
