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 #734020

SIGNALMAN,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN

Event
SIGNALMAN,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
734020
Report ID
454510

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was in an 18 ft deep, 10 ft wide, and 30 ft long trench, guiding a b ackhoe away from an existing sewer line. The trench caved in, crushing him to de ath. The employer stated that they were in the process of sloping the trench. Em ployee #1 should not have been in the trench while the sloping process was being performed.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 43 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    13
    Hazardous substance
    8880
    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.