OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14559132
SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Two employees buried, one killed in sewer trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
On September 6, 1984, Employees #1 and #2 were laying pipe in an 8 to 9 ft deep and stayed conscious. He yelled, and was immediately located and pulled to safet y. Rescuers had to search for Employee #2, who died of suffocation. trench adjacent to Highway 20, south of Thermopolis, WY. A backhoe operator had dumped a load of soil over the PVC sewer pipe. Employees #1 and #2 compacted the soil around the pipe and walked out of the trench. Employee #2 then realized th at the bell housing of the newly laid section of pipe had not been greased (whic h is the last step after pipe is laid), and returned to the trench to do so. Emp loyee #1 followed him and was approximately halfway down the trench when the wes t wall, which was adjacent to a previously excavated utility trench, sloughed of f. Both workers were buried. Employee #1 was enveloped by a small pocket of air
Victims (2)
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 25 M
- Nature of injury
- 9
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 869
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 4
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Fatality Age 30 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 869
- Human factor
- 1
- 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.