104,543Records 70,659Employers 84,666Hospitalizations 27,563Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-09-30
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14443071

WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN,CONTUSION

Event
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN,CONTUSION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14443071
Report ID
355111

Event description

Employee injured in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was on his knees using a hoe to dig into the end of a 2 ft wide by 9 ft deep trench. The center of the vertical bank on his left side caved in, bury ing him to chest level. A coworker covered him with a sheet of plywood to protec t him from additional falling earth. The Fire Department and rescue squad was ca lled and responded within minutes. After temporarily shoring the remainder of th e trench, they dug out Employee #1 with hand shovels. He suffered bruises and co ntusions, but no broken bones. He was treated at Johnson Willis Hospital and rel eased at 2:30 p.m. Employee #1 returned for treatment on April 6 and 10, 1985, a nd planned to return to work on May 1, pending a release from his doctor.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 25 M

    Nature of injury
    3
    Part of body
    1
    Event type
    1
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    18
    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.