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 #766055

CHEST,ASPHYXIATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,CRUSHED,SKULL,SHORING,SLOPING,CAVE-IN

Event
CHEST,ASPHYXIATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,CRUSHED,SKULL,SHORING,SLOPING,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
766055
Report ID
931400

Event description

Employees killed during trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was using a hand shovel to remove dirt that had fallen onto the floo vered. r of a 9 ft deep trench. He was tossing the dirt up and over the trench's east w all, which was made of concrete block. The trench's west wall, which was unshore d and had been previously disturbed when a buried pipe for water and a retainer bank directly above the trench location were backfilled, caved in and buried Emp loyee #1. The employee suffered a fractured skull and a crushed chest, from whic h he died of asphyxia. The trench was 2 ft wide at the base and 2 to 6 ft wide a t the top. The soil was wet from the previous week. A water faucet used for drin king water was accessible from only the trench floor where the employee was reco

Victims (2)

  1. #1 Fatality Age 30 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    28
    Event type
    12
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    18
    Task assigned
    1
  2. #981 Degree 0 Age 0

    Nature of injury
    0
    Part of body
    0
    Event type
    0
    Source
    0
    Occupation code
    0
    Human factor
    0
    Environmental factor
    0
    Task assigned
    0

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.