OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #822551
TRENCH BOX,PPE,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,BURIED,CAVE-IN,UNTRAINED
Event description
One employee killed, another injured during trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
At approximately 1:40 p.m. on September 17, 1987, Employees #1 and #2, of Todd-G ot retained 2 ft from the edge; and the employees were not trained in hazard rec ognition. ary, Inc., Baltimore, MD, were installing 8 in. PVC sewer pipe in a 13 ft deep b y 3 ft wide (at the bottom) by 25 ft long trench. The trench was comprised of so ft, unstable, loamy sand soil (81 percent sand, 16 percent silt, and 3 percent c lay). One side of the trench wall caved in and completely buried Employee #1, wh o had been bent over. He was killed. Employee #2 was hospitalized. There were se veral causal factors related to this accident: A steel trench shield was on site but was not in use during the trenching operation; an exit was not provided; th e employees were not wearing personal protective equipment; the spoil pile was n
Victims (2)
-
#1 Fatality Age 27 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 13
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 869
- Human factor
- 17
- Environmental factor
- 6
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Hospitalized Age 28 M
- Nature of injury
- 3
- Part of body
- 12
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 869
- Human factor
- 17
- 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.