OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #893529
FRACTURE,WORK RULES,LADDER,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,RIDING ON EQUIPMENT,BACK,FALL,LOST BALANCE,BACKHOE BUCKET
Event description
Employee's back fractured in fall into trench
Investigation abstract
At approximately 12:00 noon on October 13, Employee #1 (the owner of the company ) and an employee of his were installing an 8 in. PVC storm sewer pipe in an uns hored trench. The trench was 10 ft 8 in. deep by 105 ft long, and approximately 5 ft wide at the bottom and 7 ft 6 in. wide at the surface. Employee #1 was in t he trench aligning the pipe and making couplings while his employee operated a b ackhoe. There was no ladder in the trench or at the site and Employee #1 attempt ed to ride the bucket of the backhoe to exit the trench. He lost his balance and fell back into the trench, breaking his back. Employee #1 was removed from the trench at 3:00 p.m. by rescue personnel.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 54 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 3
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 43
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- 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.