104,543Records 70,659Employers 84,666Hospitalizations 27,563Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-09-30
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14489942

STEEL PLATE,EXCAVATION,WORK RULES,BRACING,COLLAPSE,PINNED,CONSTRUCTION,CARDIAC ARREST,CRUSHED

Event
STEEL PLATE,EXCAVATION,WORK RULES,BRACING,COLLAPSE,PINNED,CONSTRUCTION,CARDIAC ARREST,CRUSHED
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14489942
Report ID
215800

Event description

Employee killed when excavation shoring collapses

Investigation abstract

At approximately 2:00 p.m. on August 20, 1985, Employee #1 and three coworkers w ere boring a hole to push a 20 in. casing underneath a road. Employee #1 was in the approximately 9 ft wide by 32 ft long by 7 ft deep excavation. Two 8 ft by 1 5 ft by 3/4 in. steel plates without horizontal braces had been placed against t he north and south walls of the excavation at an angle of approximately 30 degre es. The plate on the south wall tipped over and pinned Employee #1 against the c asing, crushing his chest. He suffered cardiac arrest as a result of internal in juries, and was pronounced dead approximately 45 minutes later.

Victims (2)

  1. #1 Fatality Age 62 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    2
    Source
    43
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    6
    Task assigned
    1
  2. #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

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.