Cooked To Death

somefeen · 12-03-2012 06:57PM

Zen65 wrote: »

This is a common "confined space" control and I believe that it is stipulated by law as being necessary in Ireland, in addition to the normal safety "Lock-Out" procedures. I'm sure similar regulations apply also in Austria. The issue is whether people follow those procedures, and whether managers & supervisors simply turn a blind eye when the procedures are ignored.

Z

There should really be a cut out switch inside things like this where possible.

Andy!! · 12-03-2012 06:58PM

Hopefully it was quick

In that kind of situation thats the best you can hope for.

This is a horrific occurance. Anybody making jokes about this is serious scum.

GaryIrv93 · 12-03-2012 06:58PM

is there a chance that (depending on how slowly or quickly the furnace heats up) that they would have passed out painlessly before the temperature reached deadly heights?

R.I.P

Dempsey · 12-03-2012 06:58PM

The poor bastards, thats a horrible way to die

44leto · 12-03-2012 07:09PM

They also failed to instigate any of the four security measures including putting up a sign indicating that they were inside, and also failing to secure the door so that it stayed open.

As a result the door had somehow swung shut and the colleague, believing the cleaning work had finished because he had already seen his colleagues outside and noting the door was closed, had switched the oven on.

I was wondering why safety systems are not fitted so you can open the door from the inside, like all walk in freezers.

The poor men.

Zen65 · 12-03-2012 07:36PM

44leto wrote: »

I was wondering why safety systems are not fitted so you can open the door from the inside, like all walk in freezers.

The poor men.

Possibly because the closing mechanism is too complex for the sort of release mechanism you'd find on an industrial freezer. The consequences of opening a furnace door when it is 'on' is too serious to allow for an easy-open mechanism.

Also in a furnace an electrical emergency stop button would be unheard of .. . electrical components don't like to operate in that sort of environment.

I'm afraid in cases like this the best possible control option is to use a lock-out system and to physically lock the door into the open position (as well as bringing in a trailing lead so that people can clearly see there's somebody in the space).

This looks like a case of rules not being followed (assuming such rules existed).

Z

stovelid · 12-03-2012 07:42PM

Zen's posts look like he's falling asleep at the end.

KTRIC · 12-03-2012 07:54PM

GaryIrv93 wrote: »

is there a chance that (depending on how slowly or quickly the furnace heats up) that they would have passed out painlessly before the temperature reached deadly heights? R.I.P

When the core temperature of the body rises to 40c then the organs will start to shut down. It really depends on how quickly the air in the furnace heated up. Quite likely their bodies were cooked from the outside in if it heated up quickly which would have been horrific but quick.

Then again if they had the chance to try the door and pull off the insulation maybe it wasn't as quick, so who's to know.

cocalolaman · 12-03-2012 08:06PM

Dempsey wrote: »

The poor bastards, thats a horrible way to die

Why are they bastards?

Poor Uncle Tom · 12-03-2012 08:11PM

somefeen wrote: »

There should really be a cut out switch inside things like this where possible.

It would be handy in all ovens, tbh,
it would save the chicken knocking on the door to come out every time the wife cooks one...

Show Time · 12-03-2012 08:30PM

Bad way to go.

44leto · 12-03-2012 08:42PM

Its an incident like this that make you think. I can safely say we all have and probably still do ignore some health and safety regulations and drills for the sake of convenience. The above is what CAN happen. I would imagine the supervisor and management will have a lot of explaining to do in the resulting inquiry.

stoneill · 12-03-2012 09:10PM

Unfortunately this is not unique:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1443939.stm

http://www.clickliverpool.com/news/local-news/1211918-man-found-burnt-to-death-in-giant-oven-at-liverpool-region-factory.html

Simple procedures in lock out/tag out would have prevented this accident.

LordSutch · 12-03-2012 09:42PM

I remember working in a supermarket as a teenager, and they had an industrial sized fridge (of the walk in variety), it had a pressure pad/arm on the inside that you could just push to realease the door mechanism. Maybe they should have a simlar mechanism on the inside of giant ovens too.

Daemos · 12-03-2012 09:51PM

WoollyRedHat wrote: »

Sounds like something out of a Final Destination movie.. truly awful

The giant oven death in Kick-Ass was inspired by these things. Not as gruesome in real life as in the movie, but I'd say reality is worse because at a guess it would be just as painful but a lot slower

RIP

Chorcai · 12-03-2012 09:53PM

My grandfather was a manager in a milk factory, an accident haunted him for years afterwards, in the factory as one lot of men on their shift left the new shift came in turned on machines etc they didn't know that cleaning was being carried out. Four men died, they died a horrific way, literally turned into mince meat. Closed the factory for a week, litres of milk dumped cause it was red with their blood. He actually couldn't eat mince meat after that. The four men were scoupped into bags. This was years ago, my grandfather would have been 90 this year he said this happened when he was around 25.

12-03-2012 09:53PM

Ghandee wrote: »

Seconds or desert at this stage?

I'd be deserting all right

cocoshovel · 12-03-2012 09:56PM

That sounds horrible. I wonder how long they had to suffer before passing. Reminds me of that incident where a worker turned on a giant worm shaft while another cleaned inside it.

Rabidlamb · 12-03-2012 10:15PM

If that hasn't tuned your stomach read about the Byford Dolphin diving accident which happened when someone opened the hatch on a 9 bar decompression chamber

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin

for some reason, one of the tenders opened the clamp, which resulted in explosive decompression of the chamber. A tremendous blast shot from the chamber through the trunk, pushing the bell away and hitting the two tenders. The tender who opened the clamp was killed, and the other was severely injured.

Diver D4 was shot out through the small jammed hatch door opening and was torn to pieces. Subsequent investigation by forensic pathologists determined D4, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient, violently exploded due to the rapid and massive expansion of internal gases. All of his thoracic and abdominal organs, and even his thoracic spine were ejected, as were all of his limbs. Simultaneously, his remains were expelled through the narrow trunk opening left by the jammed chamber door, less than 60 centimetres (24 in) in diameter. Fragments of his body were found scattered about the rig. One part was even found lying on the rig's derrick, 10 metres (30 ft) directly above the chambers. His death was most likely instantaneous and painless.

Reloc8 · 12-03-2012 10:32PM

The bit about instantaneous and painless is what registered with me there.

Compared to what the poor fellows who died in the accident the subject of this post, that is like winning the lottery. Honestly the mind boggles.

So utterly avoidable too.

K-9 · 12-03-2012 10:46PM

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 · 12-03-2012 11:20PM

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 · 13-03-2012 10:06AM

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 · 13-03-2012 10:35AM

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 · 13-03-2012 01:48PM

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

KTRIC · 13-03-2012 01:52PM

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 · 13-03-2012 09:55PM

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 · 13-03-2012 10:35PM

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 · 13-03-2012 10:39PM

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

stoneill · 13-03-2012 11:59PM

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.,

Cooked To Death

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