104,543Records 70,659Employers 84,666Hospitalizations 27,563Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-09-30
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #731638

ASPHYXIATED,INSTALLING,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,BURIED,CAVE-IN

Event
ASPHYXIATED,INSTALLING,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
731638
Report ID
551800

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At approximately 1:10 p.m. on April 19, 1985, Employee #1 was working in a 90-ft -long by 3-ft-wide by approximately 15-ft-deep open sewer trench on the west sid e of a driveway. He was putting down a stone base in which to lay a sewer pipe w hen the sides of the trench caved in and buried him. He died of asphyxia. The so il was a sand and clay mixture.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 37 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    12
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    869
    Human factor
    9
    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.