Cooked To Death

K-9

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Did the company ever hear of tagging out? Did they ever hear of danger tags and power isolation switches? Confined space drills with someone outside keeping watch?

I hope the supervisor that was overseeing this operation gets brought up for two counts of manslaughter.

A similar thing happened in Ringsend Power station in the 80's when a worker drowned removing debris that built up in a cooling condenser. .

Probably be condemned as nanny statism, pc, heath and safety gone mad.

Horrible way to go.

cynder

I would wonder why there was not shut off inside the oven or a 2 way handle so they could get out. Like they do on freezers.


In another note my cousins husband had his arm crushed in a machine at work it was squished and he was being dragged in, someone hit the shutoff button. He lost his right arm from the shoulder.


Cant imagine what the 2 guys went through.

seamus

grindelwald wrote: »

I would wonder why there was not shut off inside the oven or a 2 way handle so they could get out. Like they do on freezers.

This isn't really safe or feasible inside an oven like this. It wouldn't be like opening the door on your home oven. If the emergency latch was to fail and the door bursts open, which is likely given the temperatures involved, then it would be very dangerous for anyone who happened to be working in the vicinity at the time.

Emergency buttons, etc are all difficult if not impossible to implement here because they would have to be physically inside the furnace - how do you stop them from melting or failing from being repeatedly heated up and cooled down?

I was thinking about this last night, and there are a couple of ways this could be safer;
You could have a badge scanner at the entrance. When you go in, you scan your badge. The door will then refuse to close until your specific tag is scanned again to indicate that you're out. Maybe this is "tagging out" that people above were referring to. That's still fallible because someone could enter the oven without scanning themselves in.

You could combine it with a large, unavoidable pressure plate at the door such that you scan your card, and walk over the pressure plate. On the way back out, you scan again, and walk over the plate again. If the pressure plate is ever activated (by someone entering or leaving the oven) without a card having been scanned, alarms go off and the door is locked open until the alarm is cleared by a supervisor.

danniemcq

seamus wrote: »

This isn't really safe or feasible inside an oven like this. It wouldn't be like opening the door on your home oven. If the emergency latch was to fail and the door bursts open, which is likely given the temperatures involved, then it would be very dangerous for anyone who happened to be working in the vicinity at the time.

Emergency buttons, etc are all difficult if not impossible to implement here because they would have to be physically inside the furnace - how do you stop them from melting or failing from being repeatedly heated up and cooled down?

I was thinking about this last night, and there are a couple of ways this could be safer;
You could have a badge scanner at the entrance. When you go in, you scan your badge. The door will then refuse to close until your specific tag is scanned again to indicate that you're out. Maybe this is "tagging out" that people above were referring to. That's still fallible because someone could enter the oven without scanning themselves in.

You could combine it with a large, unavoidable pressure plate at the door such that you scan your card, and walk over the pressure plate. On the way back out, you scan again, and walk over the plate again. If the pressure plate is ever activated (by someone entering or leaving the oven) without a card having been scanned, alarms go off and the door is locked open until the alarm is cleared by a supervisor.

Both of these are fantastic ideas, I'm sure that the process isn't to hard to put in either. We have to beep just to walk into the building at work.

I know people would be complaining that its so much effort or hassle and slow down the process but when stories like this come out it really opens your eyes

Galway K9

Now ye know how lobsters feel when their screaming and trying to get out of the pot.

KTRIC

Galway K9 wrote: »

Now ye know how lobsters feel when their screaming and trying to get out of the pot.

The reason I refuse to eat it. A terrible way to go.

Zen65

seamus wrote: »

I was thinking about this last night, and there are a couple of ways this could be safer;
You could have a badge scanner at the entrance. When you go in, you scan your badge. The door will then refuse to close until your specific tag is scanned again to indicate that you're out. Maybe this is "tagging out" that people above were referring to. That's still fallible because someone could enter the oven without scanning themselves in.

You could combine it with a large, unavoidable pressure plate at the door such that you scan your card, and walk over the pressure plate. On the way back out, you scan again, and walk over the plate again. If the pressure plate is ever activated (by someone entering or leaving the oven) without a card having been scanned, alarms go off and the door is locked open until the alarm is cleared by a supervisor.

As ingenious as these ideas are they are neither practical nor fail-safe. The lock-out approach which is standard in industry is much simpler and safer. The person entering such a furnace would first be given a certificate ("Permit To Work") to state that the power & fuel supplies to the furnace were physically isolated and locked off (with a padlock, typically, though some organisations simply use LOCK-OUT TAGS). The door to the confined space is also physically locked open and tagged (by reference to the Permit To Work), so that nobody would unlock it without having the signed work completion form.

People in industry are trained to obey these safe systems of work, and they are less fallible than electronic lock-outs (because electronic lock-outs can be reset by power failures, dips, software glitches, etc). They are simple so that everybody understands them. They are tried and tested the world over.

In this sad case it's pretty clear the rules were ignored, and I expect that an investigation will reveal that they were often ignored in that factory without consequences (moreover, downtime was reduced and thus profits increased which encourages such unsafe behaviour).

Z

Fluorescence

Wow, what a horrific death. It must have been agonising :eek:

The poor bloke who switched the oven on must be feeling awful right now too. Terrible ordeal all round, really

Da Shins Kelly

Good God. What a hideous death. That made my skin crawl.

stoneill

seamus wrote: »

Maybe this is "tagging out" that people above were referring to.
.

The tag out is used in conjunction with lock out.
You turn off the power supply and you use a padlock to ensure it remains off. Attached to the padlock is a tag, with name and contact details and what work is ongoing. Some tags carry a photo of the person. Only the person named on the tag has the key. No other person can unlock the power supply. If there is more than one person working then that each person has their own personal lock and tag. That way the power supply can only be turned on when all personnel are finished, returned to a safe environment out of danger and all locks are removed.
This procedure is applied to any hazard - electrical, mechanical, chemical, pneumatic, confined space etc.,

Run_to_da_hills

stoneill wrote: »

The tag out is used in conjunction with lock out.
You turn off the power supply and you use a padlock to ensure it remains off. Attached to the padlock is a tag, with name and contact details and what work is ongoing. Some tags carry a photo of the person. Only the person named on the tag has the key. No other person can unlock the power supply. If there is more than one person working then that each person has their own personal lock and tag. That way the power supply can only be turned on when all personnel are finished, returned to a safe environment out of danger and all locks are removed.
This procedure is applied to any hazard - electrical, mechanical, chemical, pneumatic, confined space etc.,

If a worker forgets to tag off and goes home, the correct procedure is to call up that person and make him return to the job immediately and sign off the tag. If someone else tries to sign it off for him it can be an instant sackable offense for him and also the person at home if he is aware of it being signed off unofficially.