105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14560486

BURN,HEAD,FLAMMABLE VAPORS,VENTING,WORK RULES,DRUM,CONSTRUCTION,EXPLOSION

Event
BURN,HEAD,FLAMMABLE VAPORS,VENTING,WORK RULES,DRUM,CONSTRUCTION,EXPLOSION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14560486
Report ID
112600

Event description

Employee killed in 55 gallon drum explosion

Investigation abstract

On March 2, 1989, Employee #1 was using an oxygen/acetylene set-up to cut the li d off a 55 gallon drum to render the drum ready for scrap. Apparently, Employee #1 did not remove plugs to vent the drum or ascertain the drum's previous conten ts. The drum vapors exploded, causing extensive burns and blunt head trauma to E mployee #1. He was killed.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 35 M

    Nature of injury
    5
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    1
    Source
    16
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    7
    Task assigned
    2

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.