OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14384366
BURN,MAINTENANCE,WORK RULES,STEAM,PIPE,FROZEN,ACCIDENTAL DISCHARGE
Event description
Employee later dies after suffering steam burns
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 is thought to have been ramming a 1/2 inch steel pipe into an elbow at the 80 ft point on an approximately 220 ft long stainless steel pipe that was frozen somewhere between two buildings. Because the pipe, which was 2 in. in di ameter, had lost its proper pitch, steam was being injected through a 1/2 inch p ipe that had been worked 80 ft inside the frozen pipe. Employee #1 had apparentl y connected an 85 psi air hose onto the other end of the pipe. When the ice insi de the pipe released, the ice and other residue was pushed out onto him. Employe e #1 suffered third-degree burns to 75 percent of his body from the steam, and d ied 17 weeks later in the hospital.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 58 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 23
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 11
- 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.