OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14470538
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,LOADER,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN,PUNCTURE
Event description
Employee killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Two workers were in a 7 1/2 ft deep by 30 ft long trench that was 24 in. wide at was neither shored nor properly sloped. The loader routinely came within 4 to 6 ft of the edge of the ditch when dumping stones. the bottom and 42 in. wide at the top. The soil was hard to compact. The worker s were landing stones that were being dumped in the bottom of the ditch by a Cat erpillar 960 rubber-tired loader. The ground was very damp and several inches of snow had fallen that day. Employee #1, the foreman, walked into an area where t he bank was cracked and started to level a pile of stones. The two workers cauti oned him about the area, but did not stop him. The bank on the west side of the trench broke away, striking Employee #1 with about 2 tons of earth and burying h im up to his neck. One of his ribs punctured his heart, killing him. The trench
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 43 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 13
- 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.