OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14423420
CHEST,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,CRUSHED,UNSTABLE SOIL,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
At 12:10 p.m. on October 4, 1985, Employee #1 was working in a 30 ft long by 4 f t 6 in. deep trench that was 2 ft wide at the bottom and 3 ft wide at the top. I t ran through the crushed rock parking lot of a private residence. Employee #1 w as trying to locate on old sewer line that ran diagonally to the trench to conne ct it to a new septic tank line. Some excavated dirt had been piled about 2 ft a way on the northwestern side of the trench. The weight of the dirt on a previous ly unnoticed foundation drain trench caused a large section of the northwestern wall to cave in, crushing Employee #1's chest against the opposite wall. He was killed.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 38 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 2
- 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.