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 #517052

BURN,CLOTHING,ACETYLENE TORCH,CONFINED SPACE,WORK RULES,FIRE,CONSTRUCTION,PIPE

Event
BURN,CLOTHING,ACETYLENE TORCH,CONFINED SPACE,WORK RULES,FIRE,CONSTRUCTION,PIPE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
517052
Report ID
931800

Event description

Employee burned to death by oxyacetylene torch

Investigation abstract

Employee #1, the job foreman, entered a 24 inch diameter, horizontally-drilled p ipe located about 10 feet below ground. Approximately 75 feet from the entrance of the pipe, he began to heat the metal using an oxyacetylene torch. After he us ed the torch for five minutes, his clothes caught on fire and he was engulfed in flames. He could not be rescued immediately from the confined space due to the lack of a safety line, and he was not wearing an air line respirator. After the fire department arrived, the foreman went into the pipeline with a scba and pull ed out Employee #1. He was killed.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 36 M

    Nature of injury
    5
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    14
    Source
    19
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    20
    Environmental factor
    7
    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.