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 #14215321

CHEST,SEWER,TRENCH BOX,TRENCH,TRENCH DIGGER,CAVE-IN

Event
CHEST,SEWER,TRENCH BOX,TRENCH,TRENCH DIGGER,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14215321
Report ID
454510

Event description

EMPLOYEE KILLED IN TRENCH CAVE IN

Investigation abstract

Employee #1, and two coworkers were working in a trench installing sewer line. T he employees were in a 7-ft-deep trench (dry clay soil) laying 100 ft of 8-in. s ewer drain. The coworkers finished work and, while exiting the trench, they saw the trench caving in on Employee #1. There was no septic equipment being used. T he dirt caved in around Employee #1. The pressure against his chest suffocated h im. The trench was neither sloped nor shored, and lacked a trench box.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 35 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    599
    Human factor
    17
    Environmental factor
    13
    Task assigned
    1

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.