OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #777938
FIRE,MIXER,EXPLOSION,FUEL OIL
Event description
No employee injuries sustained in explosion and fire
Investigation abstract
Propellant for the Delta II booster-rocket motor was being mixed by remote contr ol. Therefore, there were no employees in the building. The propellant was in th e final mixing stage when there was an explosion and fire. There were no employe e injuries. The mix bowl contained 1,800 gallons or 25,000 lb of propellant. The exact cause of the explosion and fire has not been determined, but evidence sug gests that there was probably a foreign object in the mix. There is a good possi bility that a stainless steel lens cover for the infrared sensor worked loose an d fell into the bowl during mixing operations. The lens cover is approximately 3 /4 in. in diameter and 1/4 in. thick and could have been the source of ignition.
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.