OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #981399

OXYGEN DEFICIENCY,UNCONSCIOUSNESS,ASPHYXIATED,VENTILATION,CONFINED SPACE,WORK RULES,GAS,SCBA,FALL,SILO

1989-11-02T00:00:00

Event: OXYGEN DEFICIENCY,UNCONSCIOUSNESS,ASPHYXIATED,VENTILATION,CONFINED SPACE,WORK RULES,GAS,SCBA,FALL,SILO
Linked inspection: No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number: 981399
Report ID: 551800

Event description

Employee dies of asphyxia in silo

Investigation abstract

At approximately 8:30 a.m. on November 2, 1989, Employee #1 and a coworker arriv because of a lack of oxygen. The coworker yelled down to the employee, but he di d not respond and the coworker ran to get help. The fire-rescue team retrieved E mployee #1 from the silo but was unable to revive him. Employee #1 died of asphy xia. ed at McKibben Farm to change the air bags in a silo. Both men climbed the silo and then Employee #1 told the coworker that he would go into the silo with a lad der. They opened the hatches on top of the silo. Employee #1 said that they did not need to put the blower on the silo and blow air into it. They waited about a n hour before climbing into the silo. Employee #1 had descended approximately 12 feet when the ladder fell backward and he fell approximately 15 feet into the l ower part of the silage. He looked up and said that the gas was bad. He started to climb back up the ladder, but then fell off, apparently losing consciousness

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 20 M

Nature of injury
2

Part of body
28

Event type
12

Source
19

Occupation code
999

Human factor
1

Environmental factor
7

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.