February 17, 2010–OSHA has cleared Walt Disney World after a 6-month investigation on the incident that led to the death of a worker. Anislav Varbanov, the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular performer died after he was seriously hurt while rehearsing for the show.
The cast member died on August 18 last year at Hollywood Studios—it was the third work-related employee death in less than two months.
Mark Priest, 47, died after complications from an injury he suffered during a performance at the Magic Kingdom.
Austin Wuennenberg, 21, a monorail pilot, died after another train backed into the one he was operating July 5, 2009. Disney was cited for four safety violations in the monorail crash, and fined more than $35,000.
The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular has run at Disney’s Hollywood Studios since 1989, the year the park opened.
I have not received and safety blogs in quite a while. I was wondering why?
I’m always surprised that these don’t get more publicity.
It doesn’t seem like they are at fault, but I wonder if they would do more in the way of prevention and employee training if these were mentioned more publicly.
When in a dangerous line of work and indeed not it is impossible to completely safeguard against accidents.
Unfortunate as this case may be it would seem its just one of life’s tragedies.
I somewhat question more whether 6 months of investigation were really required.