OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14393482

PALA-INTERSTATE, INC.

ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA· 1987-05-04T00:00:00

Event: ELECTRICAL, ATTACHMENT PLUG, GROUND FAULT, EQUIPMENT GROUNDING, ELECTRIC SHOCK, UNTRAINED, E GI V, ELECTRICIAN, ELECTROCUTED, PANELBOARD
NAICS: 000000
Inspection type: Accident-driven
Activity number: #101641108
Employer profile: PALA-INTERSTATE, INC.
Summary number: 14393482
Report ID: 625700

Event description

ELECTRIC SHOCK - GROUND FAULT IN WELDING MACHINE

Investigation abstract

A superintendent for a construction company asked a plant maintenance electricia ther nearby employee, who was trying to help the injured worker, touched the mac hine and received an electric shock. n to hook up a welding machine. The electrician cut the plug off of the machine and thinking the machine was a three-phase unit connected each of the conductors (black, white, and green) directly to one phase of a three-phase circuit in a p anelboard. The welding machine was actually a 240-volt, single-phase unit, and t he green conductor was an equipment grounding conductor and was connected to the case of the machine. When the electrician connected the equipment grounding con ductor to the 277-volt bus, the metal case of the welding machine became energiz ed. The superintendent was electrocuted when he touched the welding machine. Ano

Victims (3)

#1 Fatality Age 58 M

Nature of injury
10

Part of body
4

Event type
13

Source
15

Occupation code
19

Human factor
6

Environmental factor
13

Task assigned
1
#2 Non-hospitalized injury Age 26 M

Nature of injury
10

Part of body
2

Event type
13

Source
15

Occupation code
999

Human factor
6

Environmental factor
13

Task assigned
1
#981 Degree 0 Age 0

Nature of injury
0

Part of body
0

Event type
0

Source
0

Occupation code
0

Human factor
0

Environmental factor
0

Task assigned
0

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.