Fatality #12 - August 6, 2008

Jeffrey R. Franklin, shift supervisor, age 38, was fatally injured on August 6, 2008, when he contacted conductors for a heat tape that had been installed in a shared conduit body with the conductors of a 480-volt circuit. Both the heat tape and circuit had been abandoned but neither of them had been removed. The 480-volt circuit was energized and short-circuited to the heat tape causing it to be energized to 277 volts to ground. The heat tape overheated and portions of the heat tape insulation melted away, leaving bare conductors. Franklin contacted the bare heat tape conductors or adjacent energized parts while checking water valves in the area around the heat tape. 



The accident occurred because management policies and procedures failed to ensure that all potential electrical hazards in the plant were identified and corrected. The conduit body was not effectively grounded, the 480-volt circuit was not protected from overloads with a properly sized circuit breaker, the conductors inside the conduit body were not protected from mechanical damage, and the two abandoned circuits were not removed.