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 #14497671

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

Event
TRENCH BOX,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14497671
Report ID
626600

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 and coworkers were installing 8 ft sections of a 24 in. diameter con crete storm sewer pipe in an approximately 6 ft wide by 10 1/2 ft deep by 30 ft long trench. Employee #1 and a coworker had sealed the last joint and were walki ng toward the exit when a wall caved in, burying Employee #1 and killing him. Th e coworker escaped uninjured. The trench's nearly vertical walls were not shored . An 8 ft wide metal trench box had been used the previous day while installing pipe in another part of the trench, but the box was too wide to be used on this day.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 22 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    4
    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.