104,543Records 70,659Employers 84,666Hospitalizations 27,563Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-09-30
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14467179

BURN,FLAMMABLE LIQUID,FLAMMABLE VAPORS,WORK RULES,FIRE,CONSTRUCTION,INDUSTRIAL TRUCK,GASOLINE,HORSEPLAY,GAS CAN

Event
BURN,FLAMMABLE LIQUID,FLAMMABLE VAPORS,WORK RULES,FIRE,CONSTRUCTION,INDUSTRIAL TRUCK,GASOLINE,HORSEPLAY,GAS CAN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14467179
Report ID
626000

Event description

Employee burned during refueling of forklift

Investigation abstract

At approximately 3:00 p.m. on October 10, 1984, Employees #1 and #2 were refueli ng a forklift with gasoline from an open 5 gallon plastic bucket. Employee #2 li t a cigarette lighter 10 inches away from the open bucket. The gasoline vapors i gnited and Employee #1 dropped the bucket, which still contained 2 gallons of ga soline. Employee #1 was engulfed in flames as he jumped off the forklift, sustai ning burns over 60 percent of his body. In a signed statement, Employee #2, age 18, stated that he lit the lighter as a joke, trying to scare Employee #1. The p lastic bucket, a completely open container, was not an approved safety can.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 17 M

    Nature of injury
    5
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    14
    Source
    16
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    10
    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.