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 #14375422

BURN,HEAT,BUILDING,FIRE,LADDER,CONSTRUCTION,TORCH,EXPLOSION,SPARK,COMBUSTIBLE DUST

Event
BURN,HEAT,BUILDING,FIRE,LADDER,CONSTRUCTION,TORCH,EXPLOSION,SPARK,COMBUSTIBLE DUST
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14375422
Report ID
522500

Event description

EMPLOYEE BURNED WHEN COMBUSTIBLE MATERIAL IGNITES

Investigation abstract

On June 26, 1987, Employee #1 was standing on a ladder about 15 ft above the flo or, in an empty building, and removing a large 10-ft by 10-ft by 20-ft bag of po lystyrene pieces and dust, hung on a cable. Employee #1 was cutting the cable, w hich was holding the bag with a cutting torch. When Employee #1 cut the record c able with the torch, the bag fell and caught fire from the torch's sparks. The f ire engulfed Employee #1 and he suffered burns. Employee #1 died from burn compl ications seven weeks later.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 30 M

    Nature of injury
    5
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    14
    Source
    23
    Occupation code
    999
    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.