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 #14423784

HEAD,INSTALLING,DIRT TAMPER,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN

Event
HEAD,INSTALLING,DIRT TAMPER,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14423784
Report ID
729300

Event description

Employee dies of head injuries during trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At approximately 2 p.m. on February 12, 1990, Employee #1 and three coworkers we re installing a rubber flexible liner in an excavation that was 12 ft wide by 20 ft long by 12 ft deep. The walls of this excavation were vertical. The employee s were hammering metal stakes into the walls to hold the liner in place when the west wall caved in and covered Employee #1 with dirt. The employee suffered mas sive head injuries and was dead when his body was uncovered. The three other emp loyees were not injured.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 21 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    1
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    6
    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.