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 #889592

EXCAVATION,FRACTURE,RAIL,WORK RULES,STRUCK AGAINST,CONSTRUCTION,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,FALL,NECK,PIPE

Event
EXCAVATION,FRACTURE,RAIL,WORK RULES,STRUCK AGAINST,CONSTRUCTION,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,FALL,NECK,PIPE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
889592
Report ID
352430

Event description

Employee injured in fall into pit

Investigation abstract

On April 20, 1990, Employee #1 (a lineman journeyman) and a lineman were placing The employer does conduct safety meetings. a protective casing over piping in a 20 ft deep by 15 ft wide pit. The employee s got out of the pit to get additional materials. The coworker went back into th e pit first, using an aluminum ladder that was located at the southwest corner o f the pit. Employee #1 came back at a later time and proceeded to descend into t he pit. Instead of grabbing the ladder to get into the pit, he grabbed the 12 ft top rail of the platform. The rail broke and he fell backward 15 ft into the pi t, landing on a pipe. He sustained a broken neck and other injuries, for which h e was hospitalized. Employee #1 had been laying underground piping for 32 years.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 55 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    5
    Source
    48
    Occupation code
    585
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    13
    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.