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 #14240956

INSTALLING,SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN

Event
INSTALLING,SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14240956
Report ID
627700

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was installing a 6 in. sewer drainline in a 10 ft deep by 50 ft long by approximately 2 ft wide trench that had nearly vertical walls. One wall of t he trench caved in, covering Employee #1 with approximately 6 ft of clay dirt. I t took the rescue team nearly two hours to reach and remove him. Employee #1 was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead as a result of suffocation.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 44 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    28
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    6
    Hazardous substance
    8880
    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.