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Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #758904

WORK RULES,EQUIPMENT OPERATOR,CONSTRUCTION,RIVER,UNSTABLE SOIL,BULLDOZER,DROWN

Event
WORK RULES,EQUIPMENT OPERATOR,CONSTRUCTION,RIVER,UNSTABLE SOIL,BULLDOZER,DROWN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
758904
Report ID
551800

Event description

Bulldozer operator drowns in river

Investigation abstract

At approximately 2:00 p.m. on March 14, 1989, Employee #1 was operating a Caterp illar D-5 bulldozer on an access road that started from an existing highway and led underneath a new bridge structure into a river. Employee #1 was working the dirt to prepare this access road for later use by construction personnel. Due to the high water level of the river, approximately 115 ft of the access road was underwater. Employee #1 backed the bulldozer down this road and into the water t o a section of the road that had apparently been washed away. The bulldozer slid into the river and was submerged. The rapid current swept Employee #1 from the bulldozer and he drowned.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 50 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    31
    Event type
    14
    Source
    41
    Occupation code
    855
    Human factor
    14
    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.