105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #851154

HEAD,STORAGE TANK,EXPLOSION,BEAM,REPAIR,STRUCK AGAINST,CONSTRUCTION,WELDING,RUPTURE,FALL

Event
HEAD,STORAGE TANK,EXPLOSION,BEAM,REPAIR,STRUCK AGAINST,CONSTRUCTION,WELDING,RUPTURE,FALL
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
851154
Report ID
521100

Event description

One employee killed, one injured when adhesive tank explodes

Investigation abstract

Employee #2 was making a weld repair on a stainless steel return line of a recir re. culating adhesive system. The adhesive return line was above a stainless storage tank. Employees #1 and #2 were on top of the tank. Repairs using a tig weld had been made at various points on the two fill discharge and process stainless sys tem pipes. As the final horizontal weld on the return pipe above the tank was be gun, the tank bottom suddenly separated from the wall of the tank and propelled the tank upward into the building structural support beam and roof. Employee #2 fell off as the tank ruptured. He was hospitalized. Employee #1 struck his head on the structural member as the tank propelled upward. He died of a skull fractu

Victims (2)

  1. #1 Fatality Age 45 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    6
    Source
    5
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    4
    Environmental factor
    5
    Task assigned
    1
  2. #2 Hospitalized Age 45 M

    Nature of injury
    6
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    5
    Source
    5
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    4
    Environmental factor
    5
    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.