OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14379721
BEAM,COLLAPSE,INADEQUATE MAINT,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,CORROSION,DROWN
Event description
Employee drowns in treatment pit
Investigation abstract
On October 10, 1988, Employee #1, a sewage treatment plant operator, was assigne d to dump drums of a defoaming agent into the secondary treatment pump pit, whic h contained approximately 10 to 12 ft of hot water. Several hours later, a searc h was conducted to find Employee #1. At the pit, there were twelve grate section s found to be missing over the tank. Employee #1's body was found in the pit aft er the water level was lowered. A subsequent investigation revealed that the 8 i n. steel beam supporting the cover had collapsed due to severe corrosion. The be am was approximately 21 years old and had been subjected to high humidity and po tentially corrosive atmospheres.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 61 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 41
- Occupation code
- 694
- Human factor
- 17
- Environmental factor
- 13
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- 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.