AK Steel contractor ‘lucky to be alive’ after 20-foot fall

A Middletown man is in serious condition after falling approximately 20 feet into a concrete pit at AK Steel’s Middletown Works plant on Thursday night, according to authorities.

The injured man, Jacob Lambert, 23, is an employee of MPW Industrial Services and a contractor for AK Steel. Middletown firefighters responded around 11 p.m. to the Lefferson Road gate entrance at AK Steel.

“When we got there, it was actually a really large pit, probably 70-by-70-feet, all wide open. We were able to get down to the fall victim,” said Deputy Fire Chief Tom Snively of the Middletown Division of Fire. “It looked like he fell approximately 20 feet into the pit, and there was some railroad tracks and concrete and stuff down there.”

“He’s lucky to be alive,” Snively said, adding, “he had multiple injuries, there were some fractures.”

Once firefighters were down in the pit with Lambert, they quickly secured him in a stokes basket, and then used a crane that belonged to AK Steel to bring him out of the pit, Snively said. A CareFlight medical helicopter then took Lambert to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, where Lambert was listed in serious condition Friday afternoon.

According to a 911 call, an AK Steel nurse told a dispatcher Lambert had “severe injuries.”

AK Steel Holding Corp. spokesman Barry Racey said the accident is under investigation by the steelmaker.

“The individual was injured as a result of a fall while performing industrial cleaning work at the plant,” Racey said in an email.

Stefanie Coe, a spokeswoman for MPW, an industrial cleaning company based in Hebron, did not have any more information to share Friday.

“We’re just focused on the health of our employee,” Coe said.

Investigators for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration were on scene at AK Steel’s Middletown plant Friday, said the agency’s Cincinnati-area director Bill Wilkerson.

The federal workplace safety investigators will study what may have caused Lambert to fall into the pit, and if anything could have been done to prevent it including whether there were safety violations, Wilkerson said.

“If there were (violations), we may do what we do in terms of issuing citations and require company changes in their workplace processes or equipment,” Wilkerson said.

The last reported accident at AK Steel was April 7, 2013, when a worker was burned after molten metal erupted from a furnace, according to Wilkerson. That employee later died from injuries in that accident. AK Steel was fined $5,700 and no violations were found when OSHA returned in August 2013 for a follow-up, according to Wilkerson.

West Chester Twp.-based AK Steel employs approximately 2,400 full-time workers in Butler County between headquarter operations and the Middletown Works steel plant.