Yunku Industrial Safety

In the summer of 2023, a heart-wrenching accident occurred in the maintenance workshop of a chemical plant. During the morning shift, workers discovered incomplete residue cleaning at the bottom of Reactor No. 3. Without obtaining a confined space work permit, an operator wearing only an ordinary dust mask entered the 1.2-meter-diameter tank for cleaning operations. At 8:15 AM, the safety supervisor suddenly noticed there was no movement inside the tank...

The subsequent investigation determined that the direct cause of the accident was residual o-xylene volatilizing at the bottom of the reactor vessel, forming an explosive gas mixture with excessive concentration in the confined space. The non-explosion-proof headlamp used by Zhang generated electrical sparks that ignited the deflagration, with the instantaneous high temperature resulting in his fatal asphyxiation. More shockingly, although the safety officer had completed a facility inspection just one hour before the incident, constrained by the mental assumption that equipment was already shut down, they failed to inspect this reactor vessel which should have been designated for priority monitoring.

This accident has exposed typical safety loopholes: the work approval system was a mere formality, gas detection procedures were neglected, and emergency rescue equipment was insufficiently provisioned. Surveillance footage revealed a full 12-minute delay between detecting abnormalities and initiating rescue operations — it was this fatal hesitation that turned a controllable risk into a tragic disaster.