OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14223143
PROTECTIVE GROUNDING,ELECTRICAL,POWER LINE WORKER,ELECTROCUTED,LOCKOUT,E PTD,SUBSTATION,ELEC UTILITY WORK
Event description
ELECTRIC SHOCK - CONTACT WITH ENERGIZED PARTS
Investigation abstract
A four-person substation maintenance crew was performing routine maintenance on were deenergized by air-break switches located at various locations in the fiel d, and the switches were locked in position with the electric utility's hold car ds attached. The supervisor instructed the employees to install their grounds on the incoming line and proceed with their work. (This same procedure was used fo r three different circuits in the substation.) At 2:45 PM, the construction crew finished their work and removed their protective grounds. The construction supe rvisor informed the substation maintenance supervisor, who was on the jobsite, t hat the construction crew's grounds had been removed. At this point, there was o nly one set of protective grounds installed. One of the members of the maintenan ce crew had just completed working on a transfer switch. He told his foreman tha transfer and disconnect switches on a 34.5-kilovolt structure in a substation. A t he was going to leave the protective grounds on and the switch closed until an other crew member completed his work on a disconnect switch on the same bus. The supervisor instructed the first power line worker to open the transfer switch a fter he removed the grounds. One of the members of the crew apparently contacted energized parts and was electrocuted. (The original form did not indicate which employee was electrocuted or what energized part he contacted.) construction crew was already on the jobsite, dismantling two sections of a 34. 5-kilovolt bay just two bays south of the maintenance crew. The construction cre w had already installed protective grounds on the main and transfer buses, as sp ecified by their employer's safety manual and departmental procedures. A member of the substation maintenance crew observed these grounds and advised his superv isor. The maintenance crew decided to place their protective grounds on the inco ming lines only, as the circuits were already deenergized. The incoming circuits
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 33 M
- Nature of injury
- 10
- Part of body
- 12
- Event type
- 13
- Source
- 15
- Occupation code
- 577
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 18
- 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.