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 #14458293

ABDOMEN,PPE,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN,CONTUSION

Event
ABDOMEN,PPE,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN,CONTUSION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14458293
Report ID
352440

Event description

Employee injured in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 and a coworker were using shovels and pry bars to lay pipe in a 2 1/ 2 ft wide by 6 ft deep by 40 ft long trench. The trench had been dug with a powe r backhoe in unstable soil. One side of the trench caved in, burying Employee #1 to his chest. He sustained a contusion to the abdomen which caused internal inj uries. The trench had vertical sides with no shoring of any kind. Employees rece ived on-the-job safety training and irregularly scheduled toolbox safety trainin g. The employees did not use hard hats or any other ppe.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 30 M

    Nature of injury
    3
    Part of body
    1
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    585
    Human factor
    20
    Environmental factor
    18
    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.