OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #734012
RESPIRATORY,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee has temporary respiratory arrest in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was in a 40 ft long, 14 ft deep, and 7 ft to 12 1/2 ft wide trench r eplacing a 10 in. sewer line. He was making a joint in the bottom of the trench. No equipment was being used. The employee was gluing the pipe together when a s ection of the wall caved in on him. He suffered respiratory arrest, but was revi ved. The trench had been opened for two days and the original trench was about 3 in. narrower. The variation of width was caused by flaking due to the ground th awing. The trench was neither sloped nor shored.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 27 M
- Nature of injury
- 1
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 599
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 6
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- Task assigned
- 2
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.