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 #733618

EQUIPMENT FAILURE,OIL WELL SERVICING,STRUCK BY,LOAD LINE,TENSION RELEASE

Event
EQUIPMENT FAILURE,OIL WELL SERVICING,STRUCK BY,LOAD LINE,TENSION RELEASE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
733618
Report ID
855610

Event description

Struck by Snap-Back of Wire Line

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 and another worker were working on an oil service rig. They were bri nging fluid (mostly water) up to the surface to test for oil content. The servic e rig was a Franks Explorer III. They were using a 0.5625-inch wire line with at tachments on the end. The coworker was standing next to the well bore, and Emplo yee #1 was controlling the wire line from approximately 24 feet away from the bo re. They had about 2000 feet of wire line out when it failed during retrieval. W hen the line broke, it whipped in the direction of Employee #1, striking and kil ling him.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 29 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    1
    Source
    24
    Occupation code
    614
    Human factor
    12
    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.