OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14496145

INSTALLING,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,BURIED,CAVE-IN

1984-10-15T00:00:00

Event: INSTALLING,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection: No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number: 14496145
Report ID: 627100

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At approximately 4:00 p.m. on October 15, 1984, Employee #1 was installing an 8 in. sewer line in an 11 ft deep trench. One bank of the trench caved in and buri ed Employee #1, killing him. The section of trench that collapsed had been dug t hat day. However, an open manhole portion on one end of the trench had been exca vated a week earlier using explosives. There had also been heavy rains in the ar ea two days before the accident.

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 44 M

Nature of injury
2

Part of body
19

Event type
2

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.