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 #14539183

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

Event
TRENCH BOX,SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14539183
Report ID
452110

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was in an approximately 15 ft deep trench connecting CRP pipe when t he side of the trench caved-in. He was buried under approximately 3 ft of dirt, and died of suffocation. The trench walls had been neither shored nor sloped, an d no trench shield was in use.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 33 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    28
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    599
    Human factor
    1
    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.