OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14504948

ELECTRICAL,E GI VII,ELECTROCUTED,GROUND FAULT,WET OPERATION,EQUIPMENT GROUNDING,ELEC EQUIPMENT--MISC,WATER

1987-09-25T00:00:00

Event: ELECTRICAL,E GI VII,ELECTROCUTED,GROUND FAULT,WET OPERATION,EQUIPMENT GROUNDING,ELEC EQUIPMENT--MISC,WATER
Linked inspection: No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number: 14504948
Report ID: 728500

Event description

ELECTRIC SHOCK - GROUND FAULT IN ROTO-ROOTER

Investigation abstract

Two employees were unclogging the drain of a car wash bay. One of the employees was on his knees in about 50 millimeters of water, feeding the snake of a machin e into the drainpipe. The other employee was operating the foot control regulati ng the speed of the snake and the clutch lever controlling the forward and rever se motion of the snake. A ground fault apparently developed in the area of the p ower switch on the drive motor of the machine, electrocuting the employee feedin g the snake into the drain.

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 23 M

Nature of injury
10

Part of body
4

Event type
13

Source
15

Occupation code
999

Human factor
12

Environmental factor
13

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.