OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14402671
ELECTRICAL,E GI VII,ELECTROCUTED,PANELBOARD,LIGHTNING,GROUND FAULT,EQUIPMENT GROUNDING,SYSTEM GROUNDING
Event description
ELECTRIC SHOCK - GROUND FAULT IN PANELBOARD
Investigation abstract
An electrician was opening a panelboard at a remote oil well salt water pumping station. Lightning had apparently caused the lightning arrester resistor to open and caused one of the circuit conductors to become welded to the grounding cond uctor, which was bonded to the box. The grounding electrode for the panelboard w as a 2.4-meter-long (8-foot-long) ground rod. Thus, the ground fault energized t he panelboard to an unknown voltage without drawing enough current to open the c ircuit. The electrician was unaware of this condition. He was standing on the gr ound, which was wet from a recent rainfall, when he contacted the panelboard. Th e electrician was electrocuted.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 48 M
- Nature of injury
- 10
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 12
- Source
- 15
- Occupation code
- 575
- Human factor
- 20
- Environmental factor
- 17
- 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.