According to a recent news feature from Mass Live, a worker in a factory in Ware was seriously injured due to an electrical explosion. The workplace accident occurred last April, and the cause of this accident has been under investigation for the past few months. It is common for the Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents (DIA) to work with local police to determine the cause of a serious on-the-job accident. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) typically gets involved and conducts an independent investigation following a serious or fatal industrial accident. However, in this case, OSHA determined that there were not enough employees at the Ware plant for the agency to have jurisdiction, and, therefore, they did not conduct their own investigation.
In this workplace accident, one employee was severely injured, another suffered what have been described as serious on-the-job injuries and a third was taken to the hospital from his job site, but was able to return to work that same day. While authorities always knew that some type of electrical source caused the explosion, it is now known that the exact cause of the accident was an arc flash. The arc flash was created by a short in an electrical panel that was carrying more than 600 volts of currents. Continue reading