OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #810242
CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN,ANKLE
Event description
Employee's ankles injured during trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employees #1 and #2 were using hand shovels to grade the bottom of a trench that was 10 to 11 ft deep and 42 in. wide at the bottom. The sides of the trench wer e straight to the 5 ft level and sloped 1:1 above the 5 ft level. The spoils pil e was set back 4 to 5 ft. A 1 ft wide by 6 to 8 ft long section of the trench wa ll fell 1 ft 6 in. to 4 ft from the top. Employee #1's ankles were injured and r equired surgery. Employee #2 suffered no injuries. At 1:30 p.m. on March 1, 1988 , before inspection, the trench was filled and the sewer line completed. Accordi ng to management and employee interviews, the soil was average. After the accide nt, a layer of magnesium was found at the site of the cave-in.
Victims (2)
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 25 M
- Nature of injury
- 3
- Part of body
- 18
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 599
- Human factor
- 4
- Environmental factor
- 13
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Non-hospitalized injury Age 33 M
- Nature of injury
- 3
- Part of body
- 18
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 599
- Human factor
- 4
- Environmental factor
- 13
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- 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.