104,543Records 70,659Employers 84,666Hospitalizations 27,563Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-09-30
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14569545

BURN,FUSE,ELECTRIC ARC,E GI IV,ELECTRICAL,ELECTRICAL WORK,LOCKOUT,ELECTRICAL CABINET,ELECTRICAL FAULT

Event
BURN,FUSE,ELECTRIC ARC,E GI IV,ELECTRICAL,ELECTRICAL WORK,LOCKOUT,ELECTRICAL CABINET,ELECTRICAL FAULT
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14569545
Report ID
1054113

Event description

BURN - ELECTRICAL FAULT IN MOTOR CONTROL CENTER

Investigation abstract

An employee at a paper mill was replacing a fuse in a type W Westinghouse SEZE 1 , and hands. combination motor controller/starter located in the plant's motor control cente r. Before opening the starter, the employee had opened an external switch. Howev er, he did not know that the switch had malfunctioned and had not deenergized th e circuit. When he was replacing a 20-ampere fuse, the employee caused an electr ical fault on two phases of the 480-volt, three-phase circuit with the screwdriv er he was using. (Because of the design of the starter, it was impossible for hi m to use his nonconductive fuse puller.) The ensuing electric arc burned the emp loyee. He was hospitalized with first- and second-degree burns on his face, neck

Victim

  1. #11 Hospitalized Age 55 M

    Nature of injury
    5
    Part of body
    9
    Event type
    14
    Source
    15
    Occupation code
    23
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    18
    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.