OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #753582
SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,BURIED,DECAPITATED,COMMUNICATION
Event description
Employee killed when buried in trench
Investigation abstract
Employee #1, a laborer, was in a trench that was 24 in. wide, 8 ft long, and 5 f t deep, checking leaks in the lateral line connections of a PVC sewer pipe. The pipes were being buried by a John Deere 500C front end loader/backhoe. The backh oe operator was backfilling a series of three lateral trenches and was not aware that Employee #1 had entered the last trench. Approximately 25 minutes later, w hen the employee could not be located, the last trench was reopened with a backh oe. On the second scoop of the bucket, Employee #1 was decapitated. The cause of death was listed as suffocation with subsequent decapitation.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 21 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 12
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 18
- Environmental factor
- 8
- 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.