105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #1008978

BURN,FIREFIGHTER,UNCONSCIOUSNESS,WORK RULES,FIRE,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,POISONING,CARBON MONOXIDE,SMOKE INHALATION,RESPIRATOR

Event
BURN,FIREFIGHTER,UNCONSCIOUSNESS,WORK RULES,FIRE,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,POISONING,CARBON MONOXIDE,SMOKE INHALATION,RESPIRATOR
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
1008978
Report ID
253650

Event description

Employee dies of smoke inhalation in fire

Investigation abstract

At approximately 3:53 a.m. on February 3, 1989, Employee #1, a fire fighter acti ng as the outside ventman for the second ladder company to arrive, entered the f loor above the fire floor alone. Employee #1 was wearing a Scott 4.5 air pack, f ull-face, positive pressure respirator with a 20 minute polar wrapped cylinder, a Handie Talkie radio, and a PASS alarm, which was off. At approximately 4:00 a. m., Employee #1 was overcome by flames. At approximately 4:12 a.m., Employee #1 was discovered unconscious with severe burns. Employee #1 was taken to the hospi tal, where he was pronounced dead at approximately 5:15 a.m. He died of smoke in halation with carbon monoxide poisoning due to respirator failure.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 36 M

    Nature of injury
    5
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    12
    Source
    16
    Occupation code
    417
    Human factor
    18
    Environmental factor
    7
    Task assigned
    1

Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.