Man crushed to death by fan blade at Australian wind farm

FILE PHOTO/Agence France-Presse

SYDNEY — A man was crushed to death by a fan blade of a wind turbine being built at one of Australia’s largest wind farms, police said Monday.

He had been working at the Golden Plains site about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Melbourne, a project which bills itself as Australia’s largest wind farm.

Police said the man was working at the wind farm when he was “crushed beneath a fan blade”.

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The mammoth fan blades used on industrial wind turbines can weigh as much as 22 tonnes and measure more than 60 meters (200 feet) in length.

Images from local media showed a tractor attempting to lift the tip of a fan blade, which appeared to have toppled off a metal brace.

The state’s workplace safety watchdog said it was investigating the incident.