According to a case audit by the state Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Division, the outage began when a UNC Energy Services employee got too close to two transformers in the vault.
The employee’s name, Gaylan Bishop, is redacted in the audit, but the audit’s date, location and list of buildings that lost power match up with the details in a UNC Department of Public Safety incident report that identified him after the accident.
Once in the vault, Bishop breeched the minimum distance between two transformers causing an arc fire that severely burned him, the report said.
According to the case audit, none of Bishop’s coworkers knew why he entered the vault.
“The primary work environment for (Bishop) is an office setting,” the audit said. “(Bishop) was not issued the required personal protective equipment (PPE) to enter the electrical vault at Dey Hall because (he) was not expected to enter the vault.”
The personal protective equipment would have included rubber electrical gloves, rubber sleeves, a face shield, safety shoes and fire resistant clothing, the audit said.
“(His) clothes were mostly burned up by the arc flash,” the audit said. “What remained of (his) pants were from the knee down...(His) clothes were not fire resistant.”
N.C. Department of Labor spokesperson Neal O’Briant said the report found no wrongdoing on the part of the University that warranted a citation.
