Abstract: At approximately 2:00 p.m. on June 29, 1995, Employee #1, of H & H Environmental Services, Inc., San Francisco, CA, was assisting in cleaning, purging, and cutting a 6,000 gallon capacity, 8 ft diameter by 17 ft long tank in the shop yard. The tank was empty and had been purged with steam. When a coworker applied an oxyacetylene torch to flame-test the tank at the steam hole outlet on top, the tank's end piece exploded off. It struck Employee #1 and knocked him 35 ft into the air. He was pronounced dead within two hours from "multiple blunt force injuries." The employee's supervisor had checked the tank's oxygen/flammability with a gastech instrument, but the instrument's probe had not been inserted properly into the tank to ensure accurate readings. The probe's filter was also steam-saturated, rendering it ineffective.