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 #605576

FRACTURE,TRENCH BOX,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN,UNTRAINED

Event
FRACTURE,TRENCH BOX,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN,UNTRAINED
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
605576
Report ID
418100

Event description

Employee's pelvis fractured in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was in a 19 to 21 ft deep and 31 feet wide sewer line trench. The si ; a coworker was on the bank. des of the trench were slightly sloped. Employee #1 was aligning the laser and c learing dirt from the end of an 8 in. ductile sewer pipe. He was on his knees wh en a slick head kicked out of the side of the trench and he was completely burie d. He was removed from the trench within 25 minutes. Employee #1 was hospitalize d with a pelvis fracture in three places. The excavated dirt was piled high at t he edge of the trench opposite the side that caved in. No ladder was available a nd hard hats were worn. Sloping was inadequate and no shoring or trench box was used. Employees were not adequately trained. The foreman was nearby in a manhole

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 19 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    14
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    13
    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.