OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14543110
INSTALLING,SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,INEXPERIENCE,SHORING,SLOPING,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was working alone in an approximately 12 ft long by 3 ft wide by 8 f t deep hand-dug trench that ran alongside the basement foundation of a house. At 9:30 a.m., the homeowner saw him preparing to install a 4 in. diameter drain pi pe at the footing. At approximately 11:30 a.m., the homeowner discovered that th e trench had caved-in from the corner of the house. Rescue personnel were called and recovered Employee #1's body in approximately 50 minutes. He died of suffoc ation. The trench was neither sloped nor shored. Employee #1 was regularly emplo yed as a mason and had been doing masonry work on the house from an insurance cl aim.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 22 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 17
- Environmental factor
- 13
- Task assigned
- 2
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.