OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14511414
EXCAVATION,TRENCH BOX,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Two employees killed when excavation caves in
Investigation abstract
At approximately 9:00 a.m. on September 10, 1985, Employees #1 and #2 and two co dry to approximately 6 ft, allowing the use of a 245 excavator. workers were laying an 8 in. sewer pipe in a 66 ft 2 in. long by 24 ft deep exca vation that was 36 ft wide at the top and 6 ft wide at the bottom.. Employees #1 and #2 were inside a 10 ft high by 22 ft long trench box that was open at each end. They had just finished connecting the pipe and were getting ready to climb out when the east wall caved in, followed by the south wall. Employee #1 was out side the trench box and was buried; Employee #2 was buried inside the box. Both were killed. The two coworkers escaped uninjured. The east wall was neither shor ed nor sloped; the south wall was sloped to a 78 degree angle. The east wall was
Victims (2)
-
#1 Fatality Age 32 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 18
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Fatality Age 40 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 18
- 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.