105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14503916

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

Event
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,BRACING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14503916
Report ID
729700

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 and a coworker were laying 20 ft sections of 12 in. PVC water pipe a t the bottom of a 35 ft long by 27 in. wide by 7 ft deep trench. It ran north-so uth, parallel to a heavily traveled, two-lane roadway. Within 2 ft of the paved road surface, an approximately 19 ft long by 14 in. wide by 5 1/2 ft deep sectio n of the west wall collapsed, burying Employee #1. He was killed. The coworker h astily exited the trench when he felt the wall moving. The trench had no shoring , sloping, or bracing.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 28 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    17
    Environmental factor
    4
    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.