OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14482293
UNSTABLE SOIL,UNCONSCIOUSNESS,WORK RULES,CAVE-IN,PINNED,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,CRUSHED
Event description
Employee killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
At approximately 12:30 p.m. on August 10, 1987, a construction crew resumed inst south face began to cave in. A coworker on top of the trench yelled that the wal l was collapsing and extended his hand to Employee #1. He reached for the cowork er's hand, then stopped, turned, and ran directly into the path of the collapsin g wall. He was pinned chest high against the north wall of the trench, sustainin g crushing injuries to his chest. Employee #1 was unconscious when he was remove d from the trench and could not be revived by emergency personnel. He was transp orted to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. alling a manhole and 8 in. PVC sewer line in a 40 ft long by 30 in. wide trench that was 5 ft deep at the base of the manhole. The trench ran perpendicular to t he blacktop road surface at manholes #5C and #5D, through a soft clayey soil. At 1:20 p.m., a wedge-shaped section of the clay wall on the north side of the tre nch, 20 ft west of the manhole, began to peel away. This area was cleared and be nched off. At 1:25 p.m., Employee #1 entered the trench near the manhole to chec k the laser alignment on a previously installed pipe section. At 1:30 p.m., he w as walking along the pipe back to the manhole when a section of the wall on the
Victims (4)
-
#1 Fatality Age 28 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 17
- Environmental factor
- 6
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#981 Degree 0 Age 0
- Nature of injury
- 0
- Part of body
- 0
- Event type
- 0
- Source
- 0
- Occupation code
- 0
- Human factor
- 0
- Environmental factor
- 0
- Task assigned
- 0
-
#982 Degree 0 Age 0
- Nature of injury
- 0
- Part of body
- 0
- Event type
- 0
- Source
- 0
- Occupation code
- 0
- Human factor
- 0
- Environmental factor
- 0
- Task assigned
- 0
-
#983 Degree 0 Age 0
- Nature of injury
- 0
- Part of body
- 0
- Event type
- 0
- Source
- 0
- Occupation code
- 0
- Human factor
- 0
- Environmental factor
- 0
- Task assigned
- 0
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.