OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14296289
FRACTURE,LUNG,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,RIB,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN,PUNCTURE
Event description
Employee suffers multiple injuries in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 and coworkers were in an unshored trench, cleaning out a pipe sleeve in the foundation wall of a building under construction. While Employee #1 was on his knees working on the pipe sleeve, the west side wall of the trench caved in. He suffered two punctured lungs, four cracked ribs, and a fractured clavicle . The 18 ft long trench was approximately 4 ft 6 in. deep by 2 ft 6 in wide at t he bottom, and opened to 6 to 7 ft wide at the top. It was not graded to the ang le of repose at the north end, where Employee #1 was working. The soil consisted of fill dirt.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 25 M
- Nature of injury
- 18
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 869
- 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.