What actually happened.
Standards are abstract until someone gets hurt. These are public cases from the data center sector and adjacent electrical work, summarised for teaching — what happened, what applied, and what would have changed the outcome.
Every case here is drawn from public reporting or published enforcement data. The purpose is instructional. Nothing here assigns fault beyond what the public record states, and details are summarised rather than reproduced.
§ Why this matters more than statistics
US electrical fatalities run to roughly 2,000 over the 2011–2024 period — about 5.6% of all occupational deaths — with non-fatal electrical injuries involving days away trending sharply upward in recent years. Those numbers do not change behaviour. A specific case does.
The data center sector has a particular problem: three separate industry bodies now convene data center EHS buyers, and electrical safety has been largely absent from their published programs. The highest-consequence hazard in the building is the one least discussed at the conferences.
§ Cases
Construction electrocution, Fayetteville GA. A construction worker was electrocuted at a data center project; public reporting described work involving a scissor lift. Combines the electrical hazard with elevated work — two disciplines, one incident. Applies: 1926 Subpart K, Subpart M, multi-employer doctrine.
Struck-by fatality, Medina County TX. A worker was struck by an articulating truck at a data center construction site in October 2025; work was halted. Applies: 1926.600, site logistics, and the struck-by hazard that scales with the number of machines on a greenfield campus.
Utility arc flash fatality — Eversource. OSHA issued penalties following a worker fatality involving an arc flash during vault work; the enforcement record included a failure to test oxygen levels before entry. Applies: 1910.146 and electrical work practices simultaneously — the overlap that single-discipline programs miss.
Additional cases are added as they are verified against public sources. Summaries are deliberately brief; the teaching value is in the standards that applied, not the detail of the injury.
§ Patterns worth naming
- The incidents that kill people are usually two disciplines at once. Electrical plus confined space. Electrical plus elevated work. Programs organised by discipline miss the intersection.
- Construction phase carries the fatality load in this sector right now, because that is where the people are.
- Multi-employer sites diffuse ownership. The hazard belongs to everyone and therefore to no one, until OSHA assigns it.
- Assumed isolation is the recurring electrical failure — verified at the disconnect rather than the point of work.
Real incidents, in every class
Including data center cases, taught by an instructor who spends the rest of the week inside operating facilities.
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