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 #822361

FRACTURE,COLLAPSE,PINNED,WORK RULES,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,CAVE-IN,UNTRAINED,LEG

Event
FRACTURE,COLLAPSE,PINNED,WORK RULES,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,CAVE-IN,UNTRAINED,LEG
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
822361
Report ID
352420

Event description

Employee's leg fractured during trench collapse

Investigation abstract

Employee #1, a coworker, and the acting foreman were in a 7-ft-wide by 30-ft-lon the coworker had received no formal training on working in trenches. The acting foreman had received some training years ago. The trench soil was a clay and sh ale mixture. g by 5.5-to-6-ft-deep trench, tightening the side bolts on a dresser coupling. E mployee #1 was sitting several feet away from the western end of the trench on a 12-ft by 20-ft cast iron water pipe with his feet on the northern side of the p ipe. The coworker was at the western end of the trench on the southern side of t he pipe between Employee #1 and the acting foreman, who was at the eastern end o f the trench. The northern wall of the trench collapsed, pinning Employee #1's l ower left side between the slab of earth and the pipe. He sustained a fractured leg. The trench had not been shored, sheeted, braced, or sloped. Employee #1 and

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 38 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    17
    Event type
    1
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    587
    Human factor
    18
    Environmental factor
    6
    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.