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 130km west of Melbourne, a project that 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”.

The mammoth fan blades used on industrial wind turbines can weigh as much as 22 tonnes and measure more than 60m 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.