OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14445464
RACINE IMPLEMENT CO INC
RACINE, MN·
Event description
Employee fractures pelvis in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
At approximately 10:00 a.m. on October 11, 1985, Employee #1 and a coworker were trench was composed of crushed rock to about a foot, with the remainder being cl ay; there was approximately one foot of water in the bottom of the trench at the time of the accident. The trench was located in front of a body shop owned by E mployee #1's son. The work was being done as a favor, without arrangements for p ayment. No sloping or shoring had been used to prevent the trench from caving in . installing plastic drain tile in a 200 ft long trench that was 40 in. wide at t he top and 25 in. wide at the bottom. The coworker, who was Employee #1's brothe r and the president of the firm, was operating an International tractor equipped with a backhoe. Sewer and water lines had been installed when the trench was 6 ft deep. It had then been backfilled to about 3 ft, the depth at which the drain tile was being installed. About 30 ft from the east side of the body shop, the north wall of the trench caved in, crushing Employee #1 and fracturing his pelvi s in four places. He was expected to remain hospitalized for about 30 days. The
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 65 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 1
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 473
- Human factor
- 17
- 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.