OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14496855

AIR PRESSURE,WORK RULES,CLEANING,FOREHEAD,HIGH PRESSURE,STRUCK BY,FLYING OBJECT,PRESSURE RELEASE,WATER TANK,INATTENTION

1988-03-15T00:00:00

Event: AIR PRESSURE,WORK RULES,CLEANING,FOREHEAD,HIGH PRESSURE,STRUCK BY,FLYING OBJECT,PRESSURE RELEASE,WATER TANK,INATTENTION
Linked inspection: No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number: 14496855
Report ID: 627100

Event description

Employee killed when struck by flying tank cap

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 and two coworkers, members of the company's sanitation crew, had cle aned the filter in the plant's water filtering system. After setting it back in the bottom section of the 18 in. diameter tank, they put on the cap and tightene d down the ring clamp, sealing the cap to the bottom. During the tightening proc ess only one nut on the ring was tightened all the way down; the other nut had a n approximately 1 1/4 in. gap between the two sections of the ring. When the wat er was turned on to fill the tank, pressure built up in the tank because the ble ed off valve was not open. The tank cap blew off, striking Employee #1 on the le ft side of his forehead. He was killed.

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 22 M

Nature of injury
6

Part of body
13

Event type
1

Source
2

Occupation code
999

Human factor
1

Environmental factor
15

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.