OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14201198
WILLIAMS CONSTRUCTION COMPANY INCORPORATION
SOLOMONS, MD·
Event description
EMPLOYEE HOSPITALIZED DUE TO BATTERY EXPLOSION
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was replacing armrests on Catapillar bulldozers using a cutting torc ight misty rainfall. Employee #1 did not remove combustible and flammable items from the work area, such as the battery, or attempt to cover the battery during hot work of cutting with an acetylene and oxygen torch. Employee #1 did not use welder's or other type of eyeglasses during the cutting operation. h to remove bolts. Prior to incident, Employee #1 had completed a similar assign ment on another bulldozer using same method to remove old bolts. In this instanc e, the battery which had no cover, was located on left outer side 18 inches bene ath the armrest. Employee #1 had cut the first bolt and had just started to cut the second bolt when hot slag sparks landed onto the battery, causing the plasti c case to melt and gas forming from the heat exploded. Employee #1 sustained fir st degree burns to his face from the fire ball created by the fire and explosion . Fire immediately went out after the explosion. The weather was overcast with l
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 30 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 9
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 16
- Occupation code
- 516
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 10
- 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.