105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #762906

CHAIN,AMPUTATED,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,TRENCH DIGGER,SHORING,ENTANGLED,SLOPING,LEG

Event
CHAIN,AMPUTATED,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,TRENCH DIGGER,SHORING,ENTANGLED,SLOPING,LEG
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
762906
Report ID
454714

Event description

Employee's leg amputated by trenching machine

Investigation abstract

At approximately 10:15 a.m. on March 16, 1989, a gas line was damaged by a Ditch Witch trenching machine which was being used for gas line installation, and exc avation of the 18 in. trench was halted. Employee #1 began removing soil from ar ound the gas line to enable repair work to continue. Once work was complete a co worker began trenching while Employee #1 remained in place. Employee #1 became e ntangled in the trenching chain, amputating his right leg just below the hip. Em ployee #1 required hospitalization.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 43 M

    Nature of injury
    1
    Part of body
    16
    Event type
    2
    Source
    26
    Occupation code
    869
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    3
    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.