OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14396980
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,BURIED,CAVE-IN,UNTRAINED
Event description
Employee killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
At about 9:30 a.m. on September 14, 1987, Employee #1 was working in an approxim ately 9 ft deep trench from which three sections of 6 in. (outer diameter) concr ete pipe had already been removed. Employee #1 entered the trench to remove a fo urth section when the north wall caved in, burying him. Although rescue attempts began immediately, Employee #1 was covered for several minutes before he was re moved from the trench. He was pronounced dead at approximately 11:30 a.m. The co mpany president said the company did not have a formal training program on trenc h requirements. Employee #1 had worked for the company for nine years and was ex perienced at this task.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 29 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 4
- 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.