OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14569545
PUBLISHERS PAPER CO
NEWBERG, OR—
Event description
BURN - ELECTRICAL FAULT IN MOTOR CONTROL CENTER
Investigation abstract
An employee at a paper mill was replacing a fuse in a type W Westinghouse SEZE 1 , and hands. combination motor controller/starter located in the plant's motor control cente r. Before opening the starter, the employee had opened an external switch. Howev er, he did not know that the switch had malfunctioned and had not deenergized th e circuit. When he was replacing a 20-ampere fuse, the employee caused an electr ical fault on two phases of the 480-volt, three-phase circuit with the screwdriv er he was using. (Because of the design of the starter, it was impossible for hi m to use his nonconductive fuse puller.) The ensuing electric arc burned the emp loyee. He was hospitalized with first- and second-degree burns on his face, neck
Victim
-
#11 Hospitalized Age 55 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 9
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 15
- Occupation code
- 23
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 18
- 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.