OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14549778
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee injured when buried in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was in a 6 ft long by 4 ft wide trench that had been cut to a depth of 6 ft by a backhoe. He was using a shovel to dig away from the valve pit to lo cate the 4 in. drain opening that was at the bottom of the outside of the pit at a depth of 10 ft. Before the trench was shored, it caved in on Employee #1, bur ying his head under several inches of earth. The backhoe operator, who was diggi ng down to the 4 in. drain with the backhoe, uncovered Employee #1 to his waist. The rescue squad removed Employee #1 from the trench approximately 80 minutes a fter the cave-in. He was transported to Erlanger Hospital, where he was treated and released the same day.
Victim
-
#1 Non-hospitalized injury Age 55 M
- Nature of injury
- 3
- Part of body
- 16
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 43
- Occupation code
- 585
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 18
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- 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.