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 #14557524

CHEST,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,STRUCK BY,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN

Event
CHEST,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,STRUCK BY,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14557524
Report ID
653510

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 and a coworker were connecting 7 in. PVC sewer pipe in a 7 ft deep b y 4 ft wide by 50 ft long trench. The trench was cut vertically into a 3 ft laye r of hard earth that lay atop a level of sandy soil. Employee #1 was walking pas t a stretch of the sandy material when it gave way. A slab of the hard upper soi l came loose and struck him in the chest. He was killed.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 26 M

    Nature of injury
    6
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    1
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    585
    Human factor
    17
    Environmental factor
    6
    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.