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 #14262091

WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,BURIED,CAVE-IN

Event
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14262091
Report ID
452110

Event description

Employee injured in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At approximately 1:00 p.m. on July 9, 1984, Employee #1 and two coworkers were i n a trench laying sewer pipe when the walls of the trench begin to cave in. All three heard the sewer inspector at the top of the trench yell "cave-in," and beg an to run. The two coworkers ran toward the trench opening. Employee #1 ran towa rd the back hole, where he was buried under approximately 4 to 5 feet of dirt. H e was trapped under the dirt for approximately 30 minutes before being reached b y rescuers. Employee #1 was taken to a local hospital, where he was listed in se rious condition.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 17 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    2
    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.