Inspection Detail

Inspection: 1501461.015 - Industrial Door Co, Inc. Dba Idc Spring

Inspection Information - Office: Cincinnati Area Office

Investigation Summary

At 1:00 p.m. on November 5, 2020, an employee was working for a firm that manufactured springs. The employee was operating spring-making machinery. He was operating automatic winder W2 to make a spring. He was cutting the wire that was being made into the spring with a handheld plasma torch. There were no shields or barriers on the automatic winder to prevent sparks from the plasma torch from flying off. Sparks from the plasma torch struck a lubricated air line; that is, the line was carrying air and some tooling oil. The air line burst, and a fireball shot out, hitting employee in face. The employee suffered burns to his face, head, chest, hands, mouth, and respiratory tract. The employee was hospitalized for three days. He was intubated during that time due to the burns in his mouth and lungs. There was a language barrier. The employee was from Puerto Rico. He had lived or worked in the U.S. (not counting Puerto Rico) for one to three years. His primary language was Spanish. He did not speak English well. His supervisor spoke English and did not have a good command of Spanish. The employee stated that his father-in-law worked for the firm too and would translate for him. He also used Google Translator on his phone. The employer provided training on the computer, and each employee could choose the language he preferred when taking the training modules. The employee was not a day laborer. No other employee had ever been in or seen an incident where the lubricated air line caught fire the way it did in this incident.

Keywords: Air Line, Barrier, Burn, Chest, Cutting, Face, Fire, Flammable Vapors, Flying Object, Hand, Head, Ignite, Inappropriate Equipment, Laborer, Language Barrier, Lung, Machine operator, Metal Wire, Mouth, Plasma, Respiratory, Respiratory Tract, Spark, Spring, Supervisor, Torch, Torch cutting, Torso, Training