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 #14511018

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

Event
TRENCH BOX,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14511018
Report ID
625400

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At approximately 9:30 a.m. on November 6, 1985, Employee #1, age 16, and other l aborers were laying a 15 in. sewer pipe in an approximately 50 ft long by 30 in. wide by 9 1/2 ft deep trench. One laborer signaled the leadman to dump a load o f gravel that was being used for bedding. The leadman signaled the operator of t he front end loader carrying the gravel to move closer to the bank of the trench . As the loader neared the bank, the west wall of the trench caved in. Employee #1 was buried and killed. The trench walls were vertical. No sloping, shoring, o r trench box had been provided.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 16 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    4
    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.