An employee had connected two pieces of large wire together to provide a continuous feed of wire into a plastic extruder. The feed wire comes into the process on large metal reels; the employee was taking up the slack using a reel pay-off machine. As the wire slack was taken up on the reel, the wire swept the employee off his feet. The employee landed on his left shoulder and the left side of his head. He was hospitalized, suffering a subarachnoid and subdural hematoma as well as a shoulder injury.