OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14514921
BURN,DISMANTLING,DRUM,PROPANE TORCH,EXPLOSION,ASPHALT,INATTENTION
Event description
ONE EMPLOYEE DIES, ONE BURNED AS ASPHALT DRUM EXPLODES
Investigation abstract
On June 22, 1989, Employee #1 and #2 were heating a half-full 55-gallon drum of asphalt to add it to a holding tank for dipping fishnets. Employee #2 could not get the bung loose from the drum, so he placed the flame from the propane-heated wand on top of the drum. Employee #1 noticed what the other employee was doing from a distance and ran over to stop him. The drum blew up just before Employee #1 got there. Both employees were covered with burning asphalt. Employee #1 died from the burns. Employee #2 was hospitalized with burn injuries. The two employ ees were self-employed commercial fishermen. Employee #1 was owner of the facili ty where the two were working and had no employees.
Victims (2)
-
#1 Fatality Age 51 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 12
- Source
- 16
- Occupation code
- 498
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 10
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Hospitalized Age 51 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 13
- Source
- 16
- Occupation code
- 498
- 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.