.

In Region 7 for many years, FRA inspectors were not allowed to enter confined spaces. Instead, they supplied a Borescope and had the company representative snake it around inside the boiler. This policy has recently changed, although they still have the borescope.

Eric

.

General policy has been that FRA enter the boiler for inspection when practical and safe to do so. The Borescope is an additional tool to assist in either case. The inspector, or in the case of R7, the specialist would make that decision. All are trained regarding confined space requirements.

MDR

THIS is the assumptions that WILL get you or others killed.

An oil tank, I would suspect, most people would take seriously. And many of the vapors would probably chase you out from discomfort. (OK, an assumption there too...)

A water tank can, will, and HAS killed people. Rust literally sucks the oxygen right out of the air, and it look soooo harmless.....

A blower and a duct, $250 or so. Don't die for being hardheaded!

https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200660313_200660313
https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200660302_200660302

.

Mr. Anderson must be correct as just think how many hundreds ( thousands? ) of us have gone into the water space interiors of a steam locomotive tender to remove scale from the walls/floor with at most a fan placed at the opening for fresh air. I know I did it when we first received 2-8-0 # 90 at Black River in 1966 and IIRC we didn't even wear any masks for breathing. I'm sure we violated all kinds of OSHA rules but we did get the rust gone !!

IMHO-Ross Rowland

It's the attitude that kills. There are two real dangers to confined spaces:

They 'sneak up' on you. Almost NO one does dumb things that kill you right away most of the time. Of course, this is the #1 factor in all industrial accidents.

A very significant amount of the victims were would-be rescuers. There was a case where almost the whole family went into a tank of pig waste and died. "I can almost reach him--". Many examples of workers who died trying to rescue a co-worker. A true confined space procedure would never allow a unprotected rescuer. But for goodness sake, don't keep sending people in if they keep dropping.

Death by rusty tank is surely most common in the marine industry, where you have tons of metal and salt water. But bad atmospheres can happen even in an 'open' vessel.

Just be aware. At least drop a duct into the space and force some fresh air into it for a bit.

Truth. During World War II, we had three major mine disasters locally, along with the all too usual loss of miners and mill workers in pairs or alone. In each case, tolerance stack up driven by wartime haste caused the tragedies. It’s entirely likely that no single mistake would have cascaded into multiple deaths. Instead, they were chains of “we don’t really have to...do we?” when all of the skipped tasks seemed small and harmless.

Another consideration: be doubly careful about ventilation and a worker watching from the outside if the confined space has, or has ever had, anything organic in it. Methane is colorless, odorless, and unbreathable. It doesn’t always announce itself by blowing up. (Insert whole explanation of its properties and explosion limits here.) It will gather at the high spots and lurk. Hydrogen sulfide stinks, but only for your first breath or two, and if there’s enough of it, you won’t have many breaths afterward. Air-flush anything you can.

Multi-gas monitors small enough to carry on a belt cost around $300-350 new, and with so many mines closing you might get a donation of a decent lightly used one. It’s really easy to learn how to use one and it removes a lot of guesswork (unless your staff is good at raising canaries...)

Last year I had a potentially fatal accident at the Western Railway Museum which should be mentioned.

We have several shipping containers used for storage outside our shop. I opened one and entered to look for something in the container. The wind started blowing, and blew the container door closed. The impact caused the container's locking mechanism to turn slightly, and it caught the latch. The door was not tightly closed, but I could not reach the latch and I was locked in!

Fortunately, other people were at the museum and I was able to shout and get someone to let me out. If I had been working alone at the museum on a hot Sacramento Valley day, results could have been different.

Now, whenever I have to enter a storage container, I turn the latch to the "locked" position before entering. That way, if the door blows closed the latch cannot engage and trap someone inside.

When I was in forestry school, our "operations" instructor (logging, sawmill work, etc.) always said that whenever we did something unsafe we had had an accident, whether anyone was injured or not. Good advice.