OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14486138
SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,VIBRATIONS,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was in an approximately 18 ft deep by 5 ft long by 3 ft wide trench, trying to break open an unused sewer line to plug the end going into an active sewer line. When he struck the cast iron pipe, it began to vibrate. This apparen tly caused the walls of the trench to collapse, burying Employee #1 to his waist . When coworkers tried to rescue him, the walls collapsed further and completely buried him. Employee #1 died of asphyxia due to suffocation, aspiration of gast ric contents, and mechanical compression of the body.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 25 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 6
- 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.