OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14256259
EXCAVATION,INSTALLING,SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee dies of suffocation when excavation caves in
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was helping to install a 6,000-gallon underground gasoline storage t ank in a 12 ft deep excavation that was neither shored nor sloped. He entered th e excavation to measure the distance between test wells and to level the bottom by spreading sand. The vertical wall of the excavation caved in, covering Employ ee #1. He was suffocated and died.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 24 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 31
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 599
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 6
- 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.