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 #672410

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

Event
TRENCH BOX,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
672410
Report ID
551800

Event description

Employee killed when buried in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At approximately 8:30 a.m. on September 1, 1987, Employee #1, a laborer, was lay ing sewer pipe in a trench 11 ft deep by 39 in. wide by approximately 95 ft long . The walls were vertical and not shored, sloped, or otherwise supported. The pi pe bedding had been brought to the trench and was being lowered in by a backhoe loader when the north bank of the trench caved in. Employee #1 was buried and ki lled.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 41 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    31
    Event type
    14
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    869
    Human factor
    17
    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.