Abstract: At approximately 1:00 a.m. on October 29, 2010, Employee #1, #2, and #3 were working inside a permit-required confined space for the purpose of removing accumulated fly ash during a scheduled outage at the TVA Paradise Fossil Plant. The three employees were standing at the base of a large pile of hot fly ash that was 30 feet tall. They were using shovels to move the ash to a vacuum hose connected to a vacuum truck on the ground, five stories below. The ash pile avalanched and struck all three employees in the space. There was no attendant outside the space and no rescue assistance immediately available. Employee #1, #2, and #3 performed a self-rescue and initiated the emergency response system after they exited the space. All three employees were hospitalized in the Vanderbilt Burn Center.