OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #170228605

BURN,FLAMMABLE VAPORS,WORK RULES,FIRE,TORCH,EXPLOSION,SPARK,CUTTING AND BURNING

1990-03-08T00:00:00

Event: BURN,FLAMMABLE VAPORS,WORK RULES,FIRE,TORCH,EXPLOSION,SPARK,CUTTING AND BURNING
Linked inspection: No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number: 170228605
Report ID: 552652

Event description

Employee killed in fuel tank explosion

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was observing the removal of a motor from a junk car. A coworker was using a cutting torch to cut the motor mounts without disconnecting or draining the fuel lines. Apparently, a spark ignited fumes and the fuel tank exploded. E mployee #1 was engulfed in flames and died from the burns he sustained.

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 20 M

Nature of injury
5

Part of body
19

Event type
14

Source
16

Occupation code
999

Human factor
1

Environmental factor
10

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.