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 #742114

CHEST,CLOTHING,IRON WORKER,FIRE,CONSTRUCTION,WELDING,SPARK,ARM,FACE

Event
CHEST,CLOTHING,IRON WORKER,FIRE,CONSTRUCTION,WELDING,SPARK,ARM,FACE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
742114
Report ID
352430

Event description

Employee severely burned when welding sparks ignite clothing

Investigation abstract

At 1:00 p.m. on December 29, 1988, Employee #1, an iron worker, was using jet ro n severely burned on his chest, left arm, face, and back. He was transported by ambulance to Francis Scott Key Hospital Burn Center. At this time, it is not kno wn why the clothing burned so rapidly. ds and an electric welder to weld steel connecting points onto a building. He wa s 60 ft in the air on the third level of a building under construction. He was t ied off with a safety belt and lanyard. Employee #1 was wearing long underwear u nder a clean fleece sweatshirt and new Carhartt bib overalls, over which he wore an unbuttoned flannel shirt. Welding sparks blew against his bib, which caught fire. The fire spread to the rest of his clothing, flaming wildly. Employee #1 w as unable to extinguish the flames or free himself. Several coworkers rushed to his aid, untied him, and tore off his still-burning clothes. Employee #1 had bee

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 25 M

    Nature of injury
    5
    Part of body
    4
    Event type
    14
    Source
    16
    Occupation code
    597
    Human factor
    14
    Environmental factor
    18
    Hazardous substance
    8880
    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.