Half A Century Of Brutal And Senseless Killings, And Still No End In Sight!

51-years ago, eight men were needlessly killed due to the uncontrolled release of stored energy, the fluid power industry, hydraulic system designers, safety “professionals,” and state and federal safety agencies still ignore the big fat elephant in the room.

The uncontrolled release of stored energy reportedly killed eight men at the Wyman-Gordon Forgings, Inc., plant in Houston, Texas. The preventable accident occurred on December 22, 1966; only three days before Christmas.

According to a report in OSHA’s archives, the accident occurred when employees were performing maintenance work that required lockout and tagout of a large hydraulic press, and related equipment. Lockout/tagout calls for turning off equipment during servicing and maintenance work and locking or tagging the energy sources so it cannot be restarted until the lock and tag is removed by the person by the person who attached it to the system, or by the supervisor. It also includes the controlled release of stored energy before work begins. Full implementation of a lockout/tagout program would have significantly reduced the probability of an expected release of stored energy in the equipment.

At the time of the accident, Wyman-Gordon Forging’s workers were replacing seals on pressurized vessels containing nitrogen pressurized at 5000-PSI (345 bar). An unexpected release of pressurized nitrogen occurred at one of the vessels, killed four production and four maintenance workers. It also injured a production worker and the maintenance supervisor. Some of the workers who died had only been on the job for a few weeks. The force generated by the uncontrolled release of compressed nitrogen was so great that it propelled a 3,000-pound (1361 kilogram) valve assembly more than 200 yards (183 meters). When it hit the ground the impact energy was enough to drive it more than 5 feet (1.5 meters) into the ground.

One would have thought that after eight men died due to the uncontrolled release of stored energy, this senseless, and preventable, tragedy would have inspired at least one of the overseers of worker safety in America to honor the victims and their families by making sure this type of accident would never happen again.

31 years on……….On March 25, 1997, employee #1, who worked for a hydraulic equipment repair company, was tightening a slotted nut on a hydraulic accumulator that was under pressure of 1,000 psi. The part of the accumulator he was working on blew out and struck him in the abdomen, resulting in an excessive loss of blood. He was killed. Employee #1 had failed to release the pressure from the hydraulic accumulator prior to working on it.

36 years on………. On May 11, 2002, Steve Allen, 60, a long-time millwright at Stimson Lumber in Gaston, Oregon, reportedly died from injuries he suffered when the six-foot-tall hydraulic accumulator he was working on exploded. Two other employees were injured. 

The three men were trying to disassemble the accumulator, which acts like a large shock absorber for heavy mill equipment. Apparently, Mr. Allen did not realize that the unit was under high pressure while the work was going on.

48 years on………According to a report in a North Carolina newspaper, on Monday May 6, 2014, a millworker died at the Domtar Plant outside Plymouth, North Carolina. According to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office, the incident involved the release of hydraulic fluid that was under pressure.

Believe it, or not, in the space of time it took America to invent: cellphones, the artificial heart, personal computers, communication satellites, the internet, microchips, and land a man on the moon. And, after countless deaths, debilitating jet-injection injuries, burns eye loss, and millions of “near hits,” related to the inability of workers to “detect and diffuse” stored hydraulic energy post lockout, the country’s design engineers, safety “professionals,” and state and federal safety agencies have not been able to muster up the guts to stop the carnage.

It’s difficult to know who to blame for the problem. Many engineers opted not to use the device that would all but put an end to the slaughter citing that there wasn’t a standard they could reference. That’s not entirely true, because OSHA did develop a standard for the Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout), Title 29 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 1910.147. The only problem is, even though the standard includes hydraulic energy, OSHA seems to hold every industry accountable with the exception of the fluid power industry.

In fact the entire world seems to ignore the problem. Australia's solution is apparently to put an additive in hydraulic oil such that when a worker is injected with a substance, if it's opaque, like hydraulic oil, it can be seen on an x-ray. The International Fluid Power Society sells "business cards" that they encourage people to keep in their wallets. The card contains the name and contact information of the emergency medical facility to transport the patient to should they suffer a jet-injection injury.

I encourage you to take machinery and equipment manufacturer's warnings about stored hydraulic energy - "discharging high-pressure oil to atmosphere can severe injury, death and/or substantial property damage." If you cannot "detect, diffuse and verify" hydraulic energy non-invasively, consult your company's safety supervisor. I DO NOT want to write an article about you in the future.

I share because I care - Respectfully