OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14557037

HOBBS MUNICIPAL SCHOOLS

HOBBS, NM— 1984-04-12T00:00:00

Event: STATIC ELECTRICITY,FLAMMABLE LIQUID,FLAMMABLE VAPORS,WORK RULES,CLEANING,DRUM,FIRE,EXPLOSION
NAICS: 000000
Inspection type: Accident-driven
Activity number: #14961528
Employer profile: HOBBS MUNICIPAL SCHOOLS
Summary number: 14557037
Report ID: 653510

Event description

Employee killed when solvent ignited by static electricity

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was working in the rear of an enclosed, aluminum-shelled delivery t ruck with a 20 ft bed. He was spraying cleaning solvent through a high pressure hose nozzle to clean out a spray gun when flammable vapors in a 55 gallon waste drum ignited and exploded. The fire was fueled by a full 55 gallon drum of miner al spirits that was adjacent to Employee #1. He was killed. Static electricity i s believed to have been the source of ignition.

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 55 M

Nature of injury
5

Part of body
19

Event type
14

Source
16

Occupation code
79

Human factor
1

Environmental factor
10

Hazardous substance
2037

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.