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 #14446454

ASPHYXIATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,BURIED,CAVE-IN

Event
ASPHYXIATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14446454
Report ID
453710

Event description

Employee killed when buried in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At approximately 3:30 p.m. on July 12, 1985, Employee #1 was in a 60 ft long by 6 ft wide by 13 ft deep trench, connecting and spreading gravel on an 8 in. util ity line. Two coworkers had just exited the trench and were waiting to spread gr avel in the lower section when the northeast side of the upper section collapsed . Employee #1 was completely covered with dirt and trapped in a standing positio n. The medical report indicated that Employee #1 died from lack of air.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 41 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    28
    Event type
    2
    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.