OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #687640
SEWER,INSTALLING,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee killed in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
A contractor was installing a new residential sewer pipe to a newly installed ci ay. Rescuers refused entry until more of the wall was removed and a bucket restr ained part of the north wall which was showing cracks. Employee #1 was killed. N o shoring and inadequate layback contributed to the accident. ty sewer in virgin sandy clay soil that had many small stones. The sewer trench depth ranged from 17 ft at road berm to 6 ft at the residence. The width at the bottom of the trench was over 2 ft and the width at the top was estimated at 4 t o 5 feet. A coworker who was operating a backhoe had been instructed by the prop erty owner and the next door property owner to not put any dirt on their lawns. He had stacked the dirt in a pile 8 ft high on the edge of the south bank of the trench. On the last cut, Employee #1 was in the trench with a length of PVC pip e when the south bank collapsed, burying him under an estimated 6 ft of sandy cl
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 22 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 1
- 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.