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 #675082

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

Event
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
675082
Report ID
454510

Event description

Employee uninjured when caught in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was laying a 42 in. sewer line in a trench that was approximately 60 ft long by 8 to 10 ft deep by 12 ft wide at the top, and 6 ft wide at the botto m. The trench was not shored and was inadequately sloped with 80-year-old fill d irt that had glass, concrete, and old lumber throughout. When the north wall sta rted to crack, the backhoe operator yelled to alert Employee #1. Employee #1 sta rted to run, but the north wall caved in and buried him from the waist down. He was transported to the hospital and released the next day, having suffered no in juries.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 33 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    18
    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.