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 #607770

INSTALLING,PINNED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN

Event
INSTALLING,PINNED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
607770
Report ID
418100

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

On Tuesday afternoon, February 3, 1987, a trenching and excavation contractor wa s installing and connecting sections of a 30 in. storm drain line. Employee #1 a nd a coworker were inside a trench 7 ft 10 in. to 12 ft deep and 5 ft wide, maki ng a connection on a 20 ft section of pipe. The trench was not shored or sloped. It was adjacent to a highway, in an area that had been filled material. Employe e #1 was trapped against the pipe when a section of the trench wall collapsed. H e was killed.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 26 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    4
    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.