OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #822635
HARD HAT,WORK RULES,EQUIPMENT OPERATOR,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee's shoulder fractured in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
At approximately 11:00 p.m. on December 30, 1987, Employee #1, a senior backhoe ical and not supported in any way; the soil was soft, unstable, and damp from ra in; the excavated soil was stored at the edge of the opening; the trench was adj acent to a back-filled trench; and the employees were not wearing hard hats. operator and job foreman for United Plumbing & Heating Co., Inc., Columbia, MD, was installing 4 in. PVC sewer pipe for a single family house. After Employee #1 finished excavating a section of the 13 ft deep by 6 ft wide by 15 ft long tren ch, coworkers entered the trench and connected the house sewer line to the main line, then exited the trench. Employee #1 entered the trench to inspect the conn ection. While he was bending over, the walls of the trench caved in and complete ly buried him. He was hospitalized for treatment of a fractured shoulder. There were several causal factors related to this accident: the trench walls were vert
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 40 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 21
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 853
- Human factor
- 17
- Environmental factor
- 18
- 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.