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 #594341

BURN,DELIVERY WORK,BUTANE,WORK RULES,FIRE,HOSE,TRUCK,VALVE,ENTANGLED,ACCIDENTAL DISCHARGE

Event
BURN,DELIVERY WORK,BUTANE,WORK RULES,FIRE,HOSE,TRUCK,VALVE,ENTANGLED,ACCIDENTAL DISCHARGE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
594341
Report ID
419400

Event description

Delivery truck driver dies of burns from butane fire

Investigation abstract

On April 10, 1989, Employee #1, of Dowdle Butane Gas Co., was preparing to fill his butane delivery truck at its Aberdeen bulk storage facility. The fill hose b ecame entangled in the chain link fence and turned the gate valve on, which allo wed butane to escape and be ignited by his truck. Employee #1 died on April 12, 1989, from burns suffered in the ensuing butane fire. The cause of the accident was another employee leaving the flow valve open at the bulk tank instead of clo sing it as he had been trained to do.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 61 M

    Nature of injury
    5
    Part of body
    4
    Event type
    14
    Source
    16
    Occupation code
    805
    Human factor
    18
    Environmental factor
    10
    Hazardous substance
    0420
    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.