OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14459325
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,LIVER,TRENCH,PELVIS,SHORING,BRACING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee injured in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
At approximately 11:30 a.m. on June 19, 1985, Employee #1 was installing PVC sew er pipe in a 3 ft wide by 6 to 8 1/2 ft deep trench. He was kneeling down cleani ng dirt out of the pipe before installing the next length when the east wall of the trench caved in and completely buried him. Coworkers started to dig him out and called 911 emergency services. Employee #1 was airlifted to the University o f Maryland Shock Trauma Unit, where he was admitted in critical condition with a torn liver, a collapsed lung, and a broken pelvis. There was some water seeping through the walls of the trench where Employee #1 was working. The trench walls were not sloped, shored, braced, or benched back.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 23 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 27
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 599
- Human factor
- 1
- 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.