OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14456537
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,ARM,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
One employee killed, one injured in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employees #1 and #2 were in a 7 1/2 ft deep by 5 ft wide trench when it caved in . The soil was saturated with an excessive amount of groundwater, and the moveme nt of the soil and water buried Employee #1 to his shoulders and Employee #2 to his waist. Employee #1 was killed. Employee #2 injured his left arm when he trie d to prevent the moving soil from burying Employee #1, his boss. Employee #2 had warned Employee #1 that the trench could cave in at any time, saying "We should not even be in here!" The trench had been dug by a Case 5800 backhoe equipped w ith a 24 in. shovel.
Victims (2)
-
#1 Fatality Age 33 M
- Nature of injury
- 3
- Part of body
- 27
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 585
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 4
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Hospitalized Age 21 M
- Nature of injury
- 3
- Part of body
- 24
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 585
- Human factor
- 1
- 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.