OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14219661
UNCONSCIOUSNESS,ASPHYXIATED,COLLAPSE,CONFINED SPACE,WORK RULES,TOXIC ATMOSPHERE,CONSTRUCTION,INHALATION,NITROGEN
Event description
Employee dies of asphyxia in confined space
Investigation abstract
At approximately 10:30 a.m. on December 15, 1989, Employee #1 was preparing to r eplace the head of a vessel at approximately 40 feet above the ground when he sa w a wrench lying on a plate 4 1/2 feet down inside the vessel. This was the vess el that he had removed the head from and had hooked up to a nitrogen purge line. Instead of moving the head in place with the cherry picker and bolting it down, he chose to bend over and enter the vessel to retrieve the wrench. As he starte d to pick up the wrench, he lost consciousness and collapsed on the plate where he was crouched. A second employee went for help because he did not have a vesse l entry permit. Employee #1 was dead when he was finally retrieved.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 27 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 19
- 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.