104,543Records 70,659Employers 84,666Hospitalizations 27,563Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-09-30
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14236970

WORK RULES,PLUMBING,SHORING,CAVE-IN,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,BURIED

Event
WORK RULES,PLUMBING,SHORING,CAVE-IN,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,BURIED
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14236970
Report ID
626600

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was at the bottom of an 11 ft deep trench connecting a plastic sewer pipe section. The trench was opened for an additional length of pipe. Jack shor ing was installed at 2 to 3 ft intervals with no whaling or shoring between the upright jacks. Employee #1 moved into the area ahead of the shoring to block the flow of water out of the pipe. He was about 4 to 5 ft ahead of the shoring when the upper wall of the trench caved in and landed on top of him. By the time he was uncovered, about 20 minutes later, he had died.

Victims (2)

  1. #1 Fatality Age 23 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    28
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    20
    Environmental factor
    6
    Task assigned
    1
  2. #981 Degree 0 Age 0

    Nature of injury
    0
    Part of body
    0
    Event type
    0
    Source
    0
    Occupation code
    0
    Human factor
    0
    Environmental factor
    0
    Task assigned
    0

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.