OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #996769
FURNACE,SHOCK,WORK RULES,ELECTRICIAN,EXPLOSION,CONCUSSION,COMMUNICATION
Event description
Employee injured by gas furnace explosion
Investigation abstract
At approximately 10:30 a.m. on May 11, 1989, Employee #1, an electrician, was he ies, but apparently suffered from a concussion and shock. He was transported by automobile to the hospital, where he was treated and released. The other employe e sustained no injuries. lping another electrician try to start a gas-fired furnace. Several attempts wer e made to light the furnace, which was controlled by an external electrical cont rol panel, by going through normal operating procedures, but the furnace would n ot remain lit. Employee #1 went to the end of the furnace and looked through an inspection sight glass. At the same time, the other electrician let the furnace go through the purge cycle, then used a jumper wire to bypass the electrical rel ays in the control box in an attempt to keep the burner lit. When the ignition b utton was pressed, the furnace exploded. Employee #1 sustained no physical injur
Victim
-
#1 Non-hospitalized injury Age 40 M
- Nature of injury
- 6
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 43
- Occupation code
- 523
- Human factor
- 9
- 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.