OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14411961
TOMAHAWK CORP.
BAYTOWN, TX·
Event description
Employee killed when struck by prover arm after explosion
Investigation abstract
Employee #1, a trainee, was observing a measurement technician who was repressur izing the portable sphere prover at a fractionation plant. The technician notice d a leak in the hammer unit and isolated the meter run, decreasing the pressure through to the flare system to 300 psi. He then tightened the unit by striking i t twice with a brass hammer before setting the hammer down. The system failed, r esulting in an explosion. The velocity of the discharged ethane caused the arm o f the prover to swing violently in a counterclockwise direction, 180 degrees. Em ployee #1 was killed when the arm knocked him against and over the prover.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 23 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 20
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 35
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 10
- Environmental factor
- 7
- 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.