OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14336283
BURN,LEAK,MAINTENANCE,WORK RULES,CLEANING,FIRE,NATURAL GAS,LOCKOUT,VALVE,PROPANE
Event description
Employees burned during flash fire
Investigation abstract
Employees #1 and #2, maintenance workers, were cleaning a Y-strainer on a natura l gas line for furnaces in a secondary copper smelter. The main natural gas line valve was closed. The furnaces have a back-up system that uses propane. The pro pane valve closest to Employees #1 and #2 was open. Another employee opened the main propane valve to switch the system over from natural gas to propane. The pr opane gas then seeped back through the open valve into the area in which the emp loyees were working. It ignited, causing a flash fire. Employee #1 was seriously burned; Employee #2 was also burned, but not as severely as Employee #1. None o f the valves was locked out or tagged out.
Victims (2)
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 51 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 16
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 13
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 2150
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Hospitalized Age 41 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 9
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 16
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 13
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 2150
- 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.