OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14340616
WORK RULES,PIPE,SHORING,CAVE-IN,INSTALLING,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,BURIED
Event description
Master plumber killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employee #1, a master plumber, along with a backhoe operator and an apprentice p lumber, was laying 16 ft by 6 in. PVC pipe for a main sewer line. They were usin g the cut and cover method. They first dug about a 17 ft section of the trench, then laid the pipe, and then covered that section of the trench. Employee #1 was working in the trench, which was 38 ft 2 in. long by 36 in. wide by 8 ft 2 in. deep. He had finished chipping out a hole in the concrete manhole and had starte d back to get a section of pipe to insert into the chipped-out hole when a cave- in occurred. All that was visible was the top of his hard hat. One hour and fift een minutes later Employee #1 was freed, but was pronounced dead at the site.
Victims (2)
-
#1 Fatality Age 47 M
- Nature of injury
- 6
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 13
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#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.