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 #14454896

TRENCH BOX,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,CAVE-IN

Event
TRENCH BOX,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14454896
Report ID
728100

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At approximately 4:30 p.m. on November 29, 1986, Employee #1 was preparing to la y a length of sewer pipe in a trench. The 17 1/2 ft deep trench was 50 ft to 60 ft long and 17 ft wide at the surface, narrowing to 3 to 4 ft at the bottom. Its walls were not shored, nor was a trench box being used. The north face of the t rench caved in, burying Employee #1 in a standing position with about 3 ft of di rt above his head. He died before he could be rescued.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 23 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    31
    Event type
    14
    Source
    43
    Occupation code
    865
    Human factor
    9
    Environmental factor
    13
    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.