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 #869198

COLLAPSE,SUFFOCATED,TRENCH,BURIED,SHOVEL

Event
COLLAPSE,SUFFOCATED,TRENCH,BURIED,SHOVEL
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
869198
Report ID
522000

Event description

EMPLOYEE KILLED IN TRENCH COLLAPSE

Investigation abstract

On November 6, 1989, Employee #1was working in a trench approximately 12 feet de ep by 3 feet wide and was in the process of hand shoveling at the lower tap area when the east side wall of the trench collapsed. Employee #1 was buried by appr oximately 3 feet of soil. He was extricated in approximately 30 minutes by the u se of hand digging and a backhoe. Employee #1 when extricated had no blood press ure, no pulse and no respiration and was pronounced dead on site by the attendin g emergency air care doctor.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 31 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    4
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    4
    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.