Lockout/Tagout mistakes lead to injury, death

摘要

Here are two examples of what can happen when lockout/tagout (LO/TO) is ignored or not thought through. Two supervisors decided to check the repairs, a task which required them to walk inside the pipe with flashlights. They did not perform LO/TO on the valves, the pumps, or the controls in the control room, nor did they alert control-room personnel of their last-minute inspection. When the control-room operator started the system as instructed, the two supervisors were in the midst of their inspection and were killed by the hot oil. The second case also involves hot-oil by-products, specifically road-repair asphalt. The accident happened in a cold-weather state where asphalt is stored in large tanks and flows via gravity into waiting trucks.