Fatal Incident Summary Report: Conductor Pipe Falls onto Helper While Drilling a Well

Details

• Corporate Authors:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) Program
• Description:
  A gas/oil well drilling helper was fatally injured on June 5, 1984, when struck by a suspended conductor pipe. A crew was drilling a gas/oil extraction well
  
  the drill bit had been removed from the hole, and a 40-foot conductor pipe had been lowered into the hole. The conductor pipe was removed from a well after it was determined that the hole was not the proper depth
  
  the pipe slipped from its chain sling and fell, hitting one of the workers in the upper torso. Approximately 45 minutes elapsed before emergency medical assistance arrived on the scene, and the victim died before its arrival. It was concluded that the major contributing factor for this incident was that the chain sling was not wrapped tightly enough around the pipe. Other contributing factors were found to be the miscalculation of the depth of the hole necessitating removal of the pipe, the nonuse of tag lines for guiding suspended loads, the small size of the work deck, and the lack of critical situation response training for workers. It was recommended that the company establish a formal written safety and health program to address the hazards of the work.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Accidents, Occupational Construction Industry Occupational Health Petroleum Safety
• Keywords:
  Accident-analysis Construction-equipment FACE-84-015 Petroleum-industry Traumatic-injuries Work-practices
• FACE - NIOSH and State:
  FACE
• Series:
  Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation Reports (FACE)
• Subseries:
  NIOSH (In-House)
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.26616/NIOSHFACE8415
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Field Study
• Place as Subject:
  West Virginia ; OSHA Region 3
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSR - Division of Safety Research
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  4 pdf pages
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:00217768
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB94-151503
• Citation:
  Morgantown, : U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1984
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• NAICS and SIC Codes:
  21 - Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction - (NAICS)
• Start Date:
  1984/06/05
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:5c04f3fc9fcba1e20f00f236c38f3edf5dc5671c3321134d5a9331f46f80c4f35b5a2656b7a9f1359231f821fde370157894c11763e3d44e1ef73497a33a3418
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/167485/cdc_167485_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 268.22 KB ]