OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14557391
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was inside a 2 1/2 ft wide by 6 ft deep, vertical-walled trench that ran for 25 ft along the edge of a residential dirt road. A coworker was operati ng a backhoe at the end of the trench. A previously installed water line lay par allel to, and within 6 ft of, the trench. The entire side of the trench adjacent to the backfilled water line caved in, burying Employee #1 up to his head. He s uffered multiple injuries and was killed.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 39 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 869
- Human factor
- 17
- Environmental factor
- 17
- 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.