OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #520023
HEART,TANK TRUCK,SHOCK,CONFINED SPACE,STUCK,MECHANIC,CONSTRUCTION,VALVE,ASPHALT,HIGH TEMPERATURE
Event description
Employee dies when stuck in hot asphalt in tank truck
Investigation abstract
On November 6, 1989, Employee #1, a mechanic, entered an asphalt tanker truck to him out at a more perpendicular angle. Initially Employee #1 was still consciou s and able to speak. By the time he was extracted, however, he was unconscious a nd in coronary arrest. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. The coroner's fin dings were death consistent with peripheral vascular collapse and shock due to h eat hyperpyrexia. Employee #1 also sustained extensive 3rd-degree burns of the l ower extremities, marked pulmonary edema and congestion, and multiple subendocar dial hemorrhages within the heart. repair a faulty valve. The tank (manufactured by Aeroil Products Co., Inc., 165 0 gallon capacity, serial #280) was approximately 1/3 full of 180 degree F aspha lt. The partially cooled asphalt (type III, roofing grade) did not support his w eight, and his legs, from the knees down, became stuck in the asphalt. The Denve r Fire Department made several attempts to pull him out through the 18 3/4 in. d iameter top-mounted porthole, but with no success. Employee #1 had been in the t anker for approximately two hours when the fire department finally freed him by cutting an additional hole through the top of the metal tanker, and then pulling
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 42 M
- Nature of injury
- 15
- Part of body
- 18
- Event type
- 12
- Source
- 23
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 18
- Environmental factor
- 11
- Hazardous substance
- 8320
- 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.