OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14400543
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,VIBRATIONS,CRUSHED,UNSTABLE SOIL,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee crushed and killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
At approximately 12:15 p.m. on January 13, 1986, Employee #1 was leveling the gr #1 attempted to climb on top of the sewer pipe, but fell backward into the trenc h and was buried. He was pronounced dead following his rescue by paramedics. ound in preparation for installing another 36 in. sewer pipe. He was working at the open end of the pipe, near the north wall at the east end of the approximate ly 22 ft deep by 10 ft wide by 38 ft long trench. The north wall, which was vert ical to a height of approximately 10 feet and then slightly sloped, was adjacent to a creek. A Caterpillar tracked backhoe was operating parallel to the east en d of the trench, excavating the south sides, while a crawler type bulldozer was leveling the ground on the south side of the trench. Employee #1 was getting rea dy to go to lunch when the southeastern portion of the trench slid in. Employee
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 27 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- 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.