OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #879239
BURN,ACETYLENE TORCH,WORK RULES,DRUM,FIRE,STRUCK AGAINST,EXPLOSION,FLYING OBJECT,UNTRAINED,CUTTING AND BURNING
Event description
Employee injured by exploding drum
Investigation abstract
At approximately 9:00 a.m. on January 4, 1990, Employee #1 was assigned by his s upervisor to cut two 55 gal drums in half using a oxyacetylene torch. The drums were going to be used as holding containers for soap and water for transit buses . At approximately 11:15 a.m., he had cut open one 55 gal drum and was starting on the second drum when it exploded. The bottom end blew off, striking him in th e lower left leg. The resulting fireball also caused a minor flash burn to the e mployee's face and neck. Employee #1 was transported to University Hospital. No safety procedures were in place nor were instructions given to employees concern ing the cleaning or purging of drums.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 39 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 16
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 7
- Occupation code
- 503
- Human factor
- 18
- 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.