OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14255038
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
The employer was installing a sanitary sewer system in a residential development . Employees were laying 8 in. diameter ductile iron pipe in the approximately 20 ft deep trench. An 8 ft high trench box was in use and the trench face above th e box had an approximately 1 1/2:1 slope. The soil had a high moisture content d ue to recent rains. Pressure from the spoil pile caused the sloped trench face t o give way and slide into the trench box, where Employee #1 was located. He was killed. Additional precautions that are required when soil has a high moisture c ontent were not taken. The trench was also located near a recently backfilled tr ench, which requires special precautions that were not taken.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 68 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 599
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 18
- 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.