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Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14495204

WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,CAVE-IN

Event
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14495204
Report ID
627700

Event description

Employee dies of injuries suffered in trench cave in

Investigation abstract

On August 16, 1988, Employee #1 and coworkers were lowering an existing 10 in. g as transmission line. A Link Belt LS 3000 track hoe with a 35 in. bucket was use d to expose the pipe section to be lowered. The resulting trench measured 135 ft long by 11 ft deep by 9 ft wide. The track hoe was to dig one bucket width on e ither side of the pipe. Employee #1 was in the trench removing soil from under t he pipe so it would settle, when the north bank caved in. He died as a result of his injuries approximately 8 to 10 hours later. No sloping, shoring, or equival ent means of protection was being used in the trench.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 31 M

    Nature of injury
    10
    Part of body
    18
    Event type
    1
    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.