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 #14443899

FRACTURE,SIGNALMAN,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,PELVIS,SLOPING,CAVE-IN,CONTUSION

Event
FRACTURE,SIGNALMAN,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,PELVIS,SLOPING,CAVE-IN,CONTUSION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14443899
Report ID
355114

Event description

Employee injured in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At 12:24 p.m. on August 15, 1985, Employee #1 was inside a manhole box helping t s, and contusions. The manhole excavation and adjacent trench were approximately 15 ft deep, with vertical sides. o guide a section of sewer manhole into place. As a backhoe lowered the manhole section, Employee #1 saw that the chain reaching from the backhoe bucket to the manhole was too short. He signaled the operator to withdraw the section and adju st the length of the chain. While the manhole section was being withdrawn, Emplo yee #1 stepped outside the protective box into an unprotected part of the trench . The north side of the trench collapsed above him, knocking him down, partially covering him, and pushing him part way back into the manhole box. Employee #1 w as hospitalized for a fractured pelvis along with numerous lacerations, abrasion

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 34 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    14
    Event type
    1
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    558
    Human factor
    9
    Environmental factor
    6
    Task assigned
    2

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.