OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14471635
ACETYLENE TORCH,FLAMMABLE LIQUID,FLAMMABLE VAPORS,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,TANK CLEANING,EXPLOSION,GASOLINE,TANK
Event description
EMPLOYEE KILLED WHEN FUEL TANK EXPLODES
Investigation abstract
On January 2, 1990, Employee #1 engaged in the scraping of an underground gasoli ne storage tank applied his oxy-acetylene torch to the tank and ignited the vapo r given off by its residual contents. The employee was killed when the fuel tank exploded. The fuel tank had not been filled with water, purged, or made inert. Only an emulsifier of insufficient quantity had been added three days before the work and this did not effectively blanket or break down the product remaining i n the tank. In addition, the tank was moved after adding the emulsifier, allowin g for increased liberation of flammable vapor.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 42 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 44
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- 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.