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Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14301527

STRUCK AGAINST,CONSTRUCTION,BURIED,CAVE-IN

Event
STRUCK AGAINST,CONSTRUCTION,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14301527
Report ID
653510

Event description

Employee killed in excavation cave-in

Investigation abstract

At approximately 4:30 p.m. on July 13, 1988, Employee #1 was taking a break with three coworkers after installing three 8 ft by 27 ft gasoline tanks into a 33 f t 11 in wide by 33 ft long by 10 ft 3 in. deep excavation. The perimeters of the tanks had been backfilled with approximately 4 1/2 feet of sand that had been t rucked to the site. The employees were sitting sat in the 5 foot deep southwest corner of the excavation, waiting for additional sand. Three of the workers thou ght they heard a noise when the embankment suddenly broke loose. Employee #1 was knocked against the southernmost tank and was completely covered with dirt. He later died at an area hospital.

Victims (2)

  1. #1 Fatality Age 34 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    587
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    8
    Task assigned
    1
  2. #981 Degree 0 Age 0

    Nature of injury
    0
    Part of body
    0
    Event type
    0
    Source
    0
    Occupation code
    0
    Human factor
    0
    Environmental factor
    0
    Task assigned
    0

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.