OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14507180
HEAD,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee buried in trench cave-in, later dies
Investigation abstract
At about 2:15 p.m. on August 10,1984, Employee #1 was in an approximately 26 ft long by 6 to 8 ft wide by 10 ft deep trench, giving grade measurements to a back hoe operator. He then stood to the side to watch the backhoe operation. The oper ator noticed a clump of dirt fall and told Employee #1 to get out of the trench. As he was trying to exit, the southeast wall caved in, completely covering him with dirt. Employee #1 suffered severe head injuries and later died. The walls w ere not shored or sloped as required by the condition of the soil.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 21 M
- Nature of injury
- 6
- Part of body
- 13
- Event type
- 1
- 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.