OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14548556
OXYGEN DEFICIENCY,FRACTURE,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN,BRAIN
Event description
Employee injured when buried in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
At approximately 1:45 p.m. on April 12, 1985, Employee #1 and a coworker were at tempting to break up and remove a bed of rocks located at the bottom of an appro ximately 3 ft 5 in. wide by 17 ft deep by 38 ft long sewer line trench when the east wall caved in. Employee #1, who was running to the escape the falling bank, was buried under at least 5 ft of dirt for about five minutes. He sustained hyp oxia, a brain injury, a fractured scapula and a possible injury to his right eye . The coworker was not injured. The trench walls were neither sloped nor shored.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 22 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 21
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 599
- Human factor
- 17
- 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.