105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14337455

TRENCH BOX,SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN

Event
TRENCH BOX,SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14337455
Report ID
419700

Event description

Employee suffocates in trench wall collapse

Investigation abstract

On February 9, 1990, Employee #1, an operator/laborer, was grading the bottom of a 10 ft deep trench of predominantly sandy soil, which had been previously dist urbed. No shoring was provided, the trench was inadequately sloped, and the tren ch shield on site was not being used. A section of the west wall, approximately 10 ft long by 3 ft deep, collapsed on the employee, suffocating him before he co uld be rescued.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 27 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    31
    Event type
    14
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    14
    Environmental factor
    15
    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.