OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #800714
WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employees killed during trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employees #1 and #2 were laying sewer line pipe in a trench that was 64 ft long, 5 ft wide, and 13 ft deep. The walls were almost vertical and not shored. Emplo yee #2 was operating a jack hammer to break rock at the bottom of the trench; Em ployee #1 was using a shovel to remove and level the dirt. When the west side of the trench started to crack about 7 ft from the bottom of the trench, the emplo yees were told to get out of the trench. Before they could exit, the west side c aved in, burying them and killing them.
Victims (2)
-
#1 Fatality Age 49 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 869
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 13
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Fatality Age 35 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 869
- Human factor
- 1
- 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.