105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #1005156

EXCAVATION,REPAIR,WORK RULES,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN

Event
EXCAVATION,REPAIR,WORK RULES,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
1005156
Report ID
253670

Event description

Employee injured in excavation cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was trying to determine the exact location of a small steam leak in und the perimeter of the excavation. a 10 in. steam pipe in an approximately 16 ft diameter by 12 to 13 ft deep excav ation. The steam pipe was wrapped in asbestos, and a galvanized metal shield was set in place to seal the asbestos around the pipe. Employee #1 was in a crouche d position using an oxyacetylene torch to cut the galvanized metal shield when t he southeast wall of the excavation caved in, burying him. He was forced against a hot steam pipe. His body was buried for a total of 40 to 45 minutes, but his face and head were buried approximately 8 minutes. Employee #1 required hospital ization. The excavation was neither shored nor sloped because of small trees aro

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 29 M

    Nature of injury
    1
    Part of body
    17
    Event type
    14
    Source
    23
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    18
    Task assigned
    2

Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.