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 #733857

FRACTURE,WORK RULES,SKULL,HIGH PRESSURE,PIPELINE,STRUCK BY,ARM,PRESSURE RELEASE

Event
FRACTURE,WORK RULES,SKULL,HIGH PRESSURE,PIPELINE,STRUCK BY,ARM,PRESSURE RELEASE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
733857
Report ID
855610

Event description

Employee killed when thrown by high pressure release

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was attempting to remove 6-in. pigging balls from the ball receiver barrel on a natural gas pipeline. The system was believed to be isolated but Emp loyee #1 had not bled the system to relieve any pressure. As he removed the 8-in . Yale head enclosure cap, the pressure release caused him to be thrown about 31 ft at about a 30-degree angle. Employee #1 suffered a fractured right arm and a possible skull fracture. He was killed.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 38 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    1
    Source
    2
    Occupation code
    889
    Human factor
    14
    Environmental factor
    5
    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.