OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #745018
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN,INATTENTION
Event description
Employee injured when buried by collapsing trench wall
Investigation abstract
A 275 ft 4 in. PVC sewer line was being run from a house to a street tap in a tr g done, Employee #1 ran a 1 in. copper water line alone to where the second clea nout had been relocated. A portion of the unbenched wall collapsed, striking him in the back with a rock and soil. Hand shovels were used to free his chest. Whe n the soil was removed, he was carried out the end of the trench. Paramedics fro m a nearby firehouse took him to the hospital. A bulldozer had been grading on a n adjacent lot that morning. ench that was 2 ft bucket wide and 8 ft deep in silty, sandy soil. One worker wa s above, handing down material, and another, the working owner/supervisor, was i n charge. The second worker left to get supplies for the first 35 ft by 2 ft by 6 4 ft wide bench, which had been made on both sides. The next 100 ft by 2 ft be nch was on one side, 5 ft down, but it was vertical. A vertical cleanout had bee n installed at 60 ft. Sometime between this and a second cleanout, the owner/sup ervisor returned and found that the second cleanout had been installed but was 1 5 ft short of the actual length. During the 1 to 1 1/2 hours while this was bein
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 22 M
- Nature of injury
- 20
- Part of body
- 3
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 585
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 18
- 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.