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 #14563068

BURN,ACETYLENE TORCH,FLAMMABLE LIQUID,WORK RULES,WELDING,GASOLINE,HORSEPLAY,NON-APPROVED GAS CAN

Event
BURN,ACETYLENE TORCH,FLAMMABLE LIQUID,WORK RULES,WELDING,GASOLINE,HORSEPLAY,NON-APPROVED GAS CAN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14563068
Report ID
214700

Event description

Employee burned when soaked with gasoline while welding

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was using an oxygen-acetylene torch to weld a sign to the top of a s chool bus in the southwestern bay of a six-bay garage. While performing this tas k, he squirted water from a water extinguisher onto a coworker who was walking b y the bus. In retaliation, the coworker picked up a hubcap full of liquid that h e thought was water (but which was actually gasoline) and threw it at Employee # 1, who was welding. As a result of this mutual horseplay, Employee #1 suffered t hird-degree burns over 90 percent of his body. The causal factors were lack of s upervision, unsafe work practices and, most importantly, an open container of ga soline in the garage.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 22 M

    Nature of injury
    5
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    14
    Source
    16
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    10
    Hazardous substance
    1340
    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.