Mr. Amaral was filling the gas tank on his Lincoln Arc Welding rig that was fixed to the back of his flat-bed Ford F-350 truck.  The filler nozzle became dislodged from the filler neck of the tank, sprayed Mr. Amaral with gas, and fell to the ground without shutting off the flow of gas.  Mr. Amaral jumped to the ground to get the nozzle, felt heat coming from the ground, and realized that he was one fire.  Consequently, he suffered extensive 3rd degree burns to his body.

We investigate this loss and first attempted to cause the nozzle to dislodge from the filler neck without manual intervention and could not reproduce Mr. Amaral’s description of events.  We reviewed the Cal-OSHA report and determined that Mr. Amaral’s original story placed him on the ground at the time the nozzle dislodged. We measured the continuity of the gasoline dispensing equipment to determine if a static charge might have been created due to a loss of ground; we found proper continuity and no static build up.  We measured the continuity using a mega-ohmmeter between the tank and the ground through the truck and found none.  We measured vapor levels around the gas tank and found them all to be below the lower flammability limit.  We concluded that the nozzle must have been dislodged by Mr. Amaral’s own actions and the gasoline ignited by a spark from its impact with the ground.