OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #893115
FRACTURE,INSTALLING,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,UNSTABLE SOIL,SLOPING,CAVE-IN,CONTUSION
Event description
Employees injured during trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
At 1:39 p.m. on June 8, 1988, Employees #1 through #3 were installing a 24 in. s by Employees #1 and #3, who, in so doing, stepped outside the shoring just as a section of the north side of the trench caved in. Employee #1 suffered a rupture d spleen, intestinal bleeding, and various contusions and abrasions. Employee #2 suffered a bruised right leg and Employee #3 suffered a fractured pelvis and va rious leg contusions. The area that caved in was where an inactive telephone ser vice had been installed and intersected the gas main trench. Causes of this acci dent included working in a previously backfilled area, and lack of shoring in th at area. teel gas main in a trench that was approximately 125 ft long by 13 ft wide at th e top and 5 ft wide at the bottom by approximately 14 ft deep. The area they wer e working in was shored by 2 ft 3/4 in., 8 ft by 12 ft steel plates. Two in. ste el pipe was used as cross braces. The employees were going to weld two sections of pipe together. The ends did not match up so one section had to be marked and cut. This operation was performed inside the shored area. The retaining ring on the east pipe section had to be loosened and pushed back from the end of the pip e so that about 2 ft could be cut off. This ring was pushed back along the pipe
Victims (3)
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 25 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 869
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 4
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Non-hospitalized injury Age 45 M
- Nature of injury
- 3
- Part of body
- 16
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 783
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 4
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#3 Hospitalized Age 39 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 865
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 4
- 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.