OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #760587
MEK,FIRE,EXPLOSION,TANK
Event description
Employees uninjured in MEK solvent tank explosion
Investigation abstract
At approximately 9:00 a.m. on January 18, 1990, contract employees were replacin g pipe at the flammable liquids tank farm of RJ Reynolds Plant #604, Winston-Sal em, NC. They heard a sound similar to pressure being released or relieved, which was followed immediately by a blast -- the entire top of the methyl ethyl keton e tank (tank #4 in the farm) had blown off and was fully engulfed in flames. The local fire department and the plant's fire brigade were summoned. The fire was extinguished in approximately one hour (around 10:00 a.m.). The tank involved in the fire was heavily damaged and some of the surrounding tanks sustained damage , but no employees of the contractor or RJ Reynolds were injured.
Victim
-
#981 Degree 0 Age 0
- Nature of injury
- 0
- Part of body
- 0
- Event type
- 0
- Source
- 0
- Occupation code
- 0
- Human factor
- 0
- Environmental factor
- 0
- Task assigned
- 0
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.