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 #14202378

BURN,WRENCH,NATURAL GAS,GAS,RUPTURE,VALVE,ARM,FACE,HAND

Event
BURN,WRENCH,NATURAL GAS,GAS,RUPTURE,VALVE,ARM,FACE,HAND
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14202378
Report ID
1054112

Event description

Burns to face, hands and arms turning off a natural gas valv

Investigation abstract

On April 9, 1987, a gas line had been ruptured in a natural gas company's buildi ng. Employee #1 smelled natural gas in the building and went to the gas meter wi th a wrench to shut off the valve. Upon putting the wrench onto the shut-off val ve, Employee #1 was blown back by an explosion. With the help of another employe e, Employee #1 located the wrench and again attempted to shut off the gas valve. The second attempt was successful. Employee #1 then shut off the gas supply to an adjacent building and helped the building occupant(s) to safety. Employee #1 was then transported to the hospital. Employee #1 suffered first and second degr ee burns to the hands, arms and face.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 46 M

    Nature of injury
    5
    Part of body
    9
    Event type
    14
    Source
    16
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    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.