OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14347942
CHRIS MATTHEWS CONSTRUCTION, INC.
ADAMSVILLE, AL·
Event description
Employee dies in oxygen-deprived manhole
Investigation abstract
At approximately 10:25 a.m. on August 25, 1988, Employee #1 was sent into a sewe yee #1 and had to be pulled out himself. When the fire rescue quad arrived weari ng air packs they retrieved Employee #1, who was dead. Employees #2, #3, and #4 recovered. r manhole called a valve vault to open a valve. While in the vault, Employee #1 passed out. Employee #2, not knowing why Employee #1 had passed out, went down t o help him. Once in the vault, Employee #2 passed out. Employee #3, who had seen Employee #2 enter the vault, decided that there might be bad air in the vault. He tied a rope around himself, then entered, tied a rope around Employee #2, and then passed out himself. Somehow, Employees #2 and #3 were able to get out of t he vault. Employee #4, seeing that Employee #3 was dazed, took the rope off him and went into the vault but passed out before he could tie the rope around Emplo
Victims (4)
-
#1 Fatality Age 42 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 42
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Non-hospitalized injury Age 47 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 42
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Task assigned
- 2
-
#3 Non-hospitalized injury Age 38 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 42
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Task assigned
- 2
-
#4 Non-hospitalized injury Age 39 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 42
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Task assigned
- 2
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.