OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #607986
CHEST,FRACTURE,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SKULL,SHORING,SLOPING,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
At approximately 3:00 p.m. on May 15, 1987, Employee #1, 17 years old, entered a sanitary sewer trench to clean out the end of a previously laid pipe. The trenc h was about 15 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 12 feet deep. The walls were vertical and unshored. The south wall caved in, covering him completely. He was killed i nstantly from multiple injuries, including massive skull fractures, a crushed ch est, a broken pelvis, and a broken right arm. Employee #1 apparently did not rec ognize the hazardous condition of the trench. Weather conditions were clear. Por tions of the above information were taken from police and coroner reports.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 17 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- 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.