OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #691139
BURN,INADEQUATE MAINT,WORK RULES,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,STEAM,VALVE,ACCIDENTAL DISCHARGE,HOT WATER
Event description
Employee burned by hot water and steam spray from valve
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was attempting to repair a faulty gate valve. In order to do this he was to drain and depressurize a 4 in. zeolite water softener line that was bloc ked by a closed valve on both sides of the gate valve. When he opened bleeder va lves on both sides of the valve and the pressure gauges on both sides showed zer o pressure, Employee #1 attempted to remove the gate valve. Apparently, a vacuum in a section of the line contained hot water and steam. When Employee #1 remove d the last bolt on one side of the valve, the line broke free from the valve and released hot water and steam spray, burning Employee #1.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 54 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 6
- Occupation code
- 585
- Human factor
- 17
- 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.