OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #816777
FLAMMABLE VAPORS,PINNED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TORCH,CRUSHED,EXPLOSION,TANK,CUTTING AND BURNING
Event description
Employee killed in tank explosion
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was hired to cut up underground tanks and dispose of the pieces. A l eaded gasoline tank was taken to the cutting area. The tank was flooded with nit rogen and then sampled at the exit ports. The tank was then steamed and flooded again with nitrogen. The employee again checked the tank at the ports only and s aid it was okay. He put the steam hose in and started to cut. When the torch pun ctured the tank, it blew. The tank pinned Employee #1 between the welding truck and the tank, crushing and killing him.
Victims (2)
-
#1 Fatality Age 33 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 11
- Environmental factor
- 18
- Hazardous substance
- 1340
- Task assigned
- 2
-
#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.