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 #14402648

LIFELINE,PPE,SUFFOCATED,GRAIN,WORK RULES,SAFETY BELT,CLOGGED,BURIED,GRAIN DUST,GRAIN BIN

Event
LIFELINE,PPE,SUFFOCATED,GRAIN,WORK RULES,SAFETY BELT,CLOGGED,BURIED,GRAIN DUST,GRAIN BIN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14402648
Report ID
626000

Event description

Employee suffocates in grain storage bin

Investigation abstract

At about 2:00 p.m. on October 27, 1987, Employee #1 and a coworker were inside a round storage tank attempting to unplug an auger at the bottom of the tank. The y were using an approximately 10 ft long plastic pipe to push down through the 7 or 8 ft of corn to where the auger was running. As the corn started to flow rap idly, Employee #1 was pulled under. He died of suffocation; his coworker escaped without injury. Neither employee was wearing a safety harness or using a safety line.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 53 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    28
    Event type
    12
    Source
    27
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    18
    Environmental factor
    8
    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.