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 #14342380

HEAD,WORK RULES,STRUCK AGAINST,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,WATER PIPE,SLOPING,CAVE-IN

Event
HEAD,WORK RULES,STRUCK AGAINST,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,WATER PIPE,SLOPING,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14342380
Report ID
418800

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At approximately 2:15 p.m. on June 4, 1986, Employee #1 was in a trench that mea aged during digging. sured approximately 19 ft long, 4 ft wide, and 9 ft deep. The trench walls were almost vertical and had not been shored, sloped, or braced. When the west bank o f the trench caved in, Employee #1 backed up and struck his head against an appr oximately 6 1/2 in. cast iron water pipe that was partially covered with dirt an d rocks. Employee #1 was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Ac cording to a power shovel operator, Employee #1 was working in the trench as a m achine helper, whose responsibilities included informing the operator of the pow er shovel of pipes, wiring, and other items in the trench were that could be dam

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 40 M

    Nature of injury
    3
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    6
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    17
    Environmental factor
    13
    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.