OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #758797
FLAMMABLE VAPORS,WORK RULES,WELDING,EXPLOSION,HEARING LOSS,CONCUSSION,FACE,TANK,ARC WELDING
Event description
Two employees injured in tank explosion
Investigation abstract
At approximately 1:38 p.m. on December 4, 1989, Employee #2 was holding a bracke t that Employee #1 was going to weld onto the rear of a 5,000 gal n-hexane tank. When Employee #1 struck an arc with the mig welder, the fumes that had built up around the rear valve assembly that was being repaired caused the empty tank to explode. Employee #1 suffered a concussion and severe ear damage. Employee #2 s uffered severe facial damage and a concussion. Both employees were hospitalized.
Victims (2)
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 27 M
- Nature of injury
- 6
- Part of body
- 13
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 885
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 9
- Hazardous substance
- 1380
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Hospitalized Age 47 M
- Nature of injury
- 6
- Part of body
- 13
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 885
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 5
- Hazardous substance
- 1380
- 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.