OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #762526
BURN,FURNACE,FIRE,EXPLOSION,HIGH PRESSURE
Event description
Employee dies of burns from furnace blast
Investigation abstract
Employee #1, an electrician, was one of three employees who were troubleshooting s looking like the flame of a blow torch engulfed Employee #1 for approximately 20 seconds until the furnace was shut off. Employee #1 sustained third-degree bu rns that covered 40 percent of his body and died of complications two weeks late r. Employee #1 was acting with no written rules or policies for guidance, a piece of equipment on a furnace roof. The 35 megawatt furnace, used in the sm elting of phosphate ore, had been down for a complete rebuild. It had only been brought back up to full load that morning and was running rough. Employee #1, wi thout the furnace operator's knowledge, was standing on a ladder approximately 1 3 feet away, directly in front of a 9 inch diameter rod out hole on the furnace offtake. The hole is packed with a ball of "clay." Without warning, and as the r esult of one of a number of possible causes, the furnace went "on pressure". Thi s sudden overpressurization blew out the packing ball. What witnesses describe a
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 51 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 16
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 19
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 17
- Environmental factor
- 13
- Hazardous substance
- 8420
- 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.