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This is why Lock-Out Tag-Out (LOTO) is so important.
Protects yourself protect others. Never go into or work on a machine unless it cannot be energized or stops installed.
This happens alot in manufacturing esp when people get lazy and don't follow procedures or management doesnt enforce/train/make it possible.
And taking bolt cutters to a lockout lock without a thorough investigation of where the owner of said lock is should be treated as either attempted murder or murder, depending on the outcome.
Edit: not necessarily applicable to this particular story, but hearing about it being done in some cases pisses me off.
If you cut a lock and someone gets hurt or killed there is jail time and employers are aware of this. The bigger issue is that so many employees are either not trained or just do not lock out when they should. My personal lock is so worn that it looks like beach glass but the majority I see "in use" are basically new in box condition.
Something isn't adding up here. The first article I read about this said that there were employees nearby who saw her but were unable to open the door. If I see someone being literally cooked, I'm going to grab the closest metal object and smash the fuck out of the door. I would imagine most people would have the same reaction. Even if it's a metal door, 4 or 5 people could almost certainly pry it open.
Or, you know, turn it off? There must have been an emergency kill switch on that thing
Unless the oven auto starts on close I don’t see how this could have happened with the victim alone. I think ours would idle when closed but they would be already on (warm enough to alert/stop someone walking inside). Like it’d have to be a shit design if an employee could just close themselves inside one and the oven starts some sort of program or turns on due to a schedule. Very interested to hear what the investigation turns up. Feels very much like someone might be up for manslaughter/ neg homicide.
Ex: She was inside cleaning and an employee wearing ANC headphones closed it and hit it the on. Or someone closing her in there as a “prank” not realising the danger.
I did a brief stint working in a bakery. If it’s anything like those oven there’s only a small glass window to see inside. Though I don’t recall them locking, I imagine they would otherwise employees would get blasted with hundred degree heat. They also seem like prying them open would be incredibly difficult. I don’t know how they aren’t like walk ins with an emergency release. I agree still something doesn’t add up.
I don’t know how they aren’t like walk ins with an emergency release.
I can't imagine it would pass OH&S muster to not have an internal release on a walk in oven. I suspect poorly maintained equipment where the release was broken. Something similar happened to an Arby's manager last year.
The emergency release on walk-in freezers isn’t great either.
It can ice up or jam, the handle can be bent, and because the door opens outward all it takes is one poorly placed pallet and you can be trapped.
When I worked with one my cell phone didn’t work inside either.
When I worked with one my cell phone didn’t work inside either.
makes sense, it's basically a giant Faraday cage
I haven't worked in many places with a walk in freezer, but the several I have all had alarms in them. Not automatic, but if the door was stuck there was a big red button next to it that would set off a siren and flashing light outside.
Huh, the one I worked in didn’t have that.
It just had a glow in the dark handle for the door.
Every detail I read makes this feel more and more like she was murdered. Suspicious as fuck.
Being found in a Walk In Oven dead and CLOSING THE WALMART while investigating makes me thing something not so good went on.
I'm pretty sure walk-in ovens, like walk-in freezers, are supposed to have a few safety features like interior handles that open regardless of any outside lock, alarms, etc.
This is certainly suspicious af.
Bad maintenance disabling the safety devices, or grandfathered equipment which didn't have them, or inadequate employee training on safety. All of those put Walmart at fault to varying degrees. That looks to me like the most likely scenario in the absence of other data.
Or someone intentionally jammed any safety mechanisms, which would mean that person committed murder or manslaughter depending on the details.
It's also possible that the deceased employee panicked when she realized what had happened and failed to operate a safety device she would have known full well was there if her rational brain hadn't been overwhelmed by her lizard brain. That would be tragic, but not actionable.
We still don't know enough.
The management might have preferred the store closure to having the bakery department marked off with crime scene tape in full view of any customers. And the cops probably appreciated not having a bunch of lookie-loos staring at them across the tape. Plus I imagine that the dead woman's mother isn't the only employee dealing with shock/mental health issues because of this. They may not have been able to get enough staff willing to come in to reopen the store immediately.
(TL;DR: There may well be something ugly going on here, but I don't think the store being closed is enough evidence to prove that on its own.)
The thing is this hasn't stopped them in the past.
Regardless of foul play, this is awful and deserves a thorough investigation.
Either the security protections weren’t good enough, protocols weren’t followed, or something else happened that needs to be understood (accidental or otherwise).
God damn that's just another layer of shit to this sandwich.
for my first job one of the responsibilities was cleanup after the overnight bakery shift. I used to have to clean out a walk-in oven, usually still warm, always freaked me out a little. That poor, poor girl, that poor, poor family. Simply terrible and tragic.
What in the actual fuck.
I want to know how she died. If that makes me a bad person, then so be it.
Knowing the how and why of workers' deaths only makes you a bad person if you want it to happen again.
Why would that make you a bad person?
I was looking at it as kind of “morbid”, but your question is a good one.
Likely asphyxiation, and not the pleasant, "drift off on a carbon monoxide high" kind of asphyxiation. The "oh God, my lungs are melting and I can't breathe" kind of asphyxiation. The only hope is that it got hot fast enough that her brain melted before her lungs, so she didn't have time to understand the pain. All in all, it's not a good way to go.
I don't think Walmart spends that kind of money on their ovens
Yeah, the only way someone is dying in a furnace before feeling pain is if you're dealing with molten-metal-type temperatures. Not a bakery oven. I'm sure this poor woman experienced excruciating pain for far too long.
I work at one of those furnaces, if you fall in molten metal it will not be fast. You are EXTREMELY buoyant in liquid rock/metal.
Absolutely terrifying... but thank you for the insight.
I think about it a lot while staring down into 'The Pit' on the production floor.
For those playing at home, try this:
Heat up a frying pan on low heat and throw some water in there. It sizzles and bubbles weakly but evaporates quite quickly.
Now heat up the pan over medium-high heat. Throw water in there and watch it turn into little marbles that dance around the pan. It seems much more violent but notice that the water marbles last way longer because they’re actually floating on a cushion of steam. This is also why they seem to fly around pan so rapidly: the steam cushion removes almost all of the friction.
This is called the Leidenfrost effect. Very high temperature frying pans actually conduct heat into the water more slowly than lower temperature ones because the steam cushion acts as an insulator.
Well it turns out if you put your hand in molten metal the same thing happens! The moisture on your skin flashes to steam and creates a barrier which slows down the conduction of heat into your skin. Of course, if you fall into molten metal you may not be able to get out. The Leidenfrost effect also doesn’t do anything to protect you from the intense thermal radiation being emitted by the molten metal!
Funnily enough, this also happens if you pour some liquid nitrogen into your hands. It dances around just like the water does in the hot frying pan. Your skin is like a hot frying pan compared to liquid nitrogen and the nitrogen gas produced is like steam in this case.
Curiousity doesn't make you a bad person, it makes you a person.
well I mean yeah, as stated in the article that's what the investigators are trying to determine. it's pretty much the first step in any investigation like this. just because her body was found in the oven doesn't automatically mean she was baked alive