105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #601724

ASPHYXIATED,INSTALLING,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN

Event
ASPHYXIATED,INSTALLING,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
601724
Report ID
420600

Event description

Employee dies of asphyxia in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

On Friday, September 9, 1988, Employee #1 was working in a trench that was 5 fee t deep by 4 feet wide, installing sections of 12 inch diameter by 20 foot long w ater pipe. The walls of the trench were nearly vertical and no shoring was used. The east wall caved in and buried the employee with dirt. Employee #1 died of t raumatic asphyxia.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 33 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    28
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    13
    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.