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 #893586

HEAD,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,STRUCK BY,SLOPING,CAVE-IN

Event
HEAD,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,STRUCK BY,SLOPING,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
893586
Report ID
355114

Event description

Employee injured in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At approximately 11:15 a.m. on September 22, 1988, Employee #1 was digging out l oose soil in a 44 ft long by 3 ft wide by 8 ft deep trench. The west wall was ve rtical and neither shored nor sloped. It caved in, knocking Employee #1 against the foundation of the existing structure and covering his chest with dirt. He su ffered head injuries and multiple trauma and was hospitalized.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 24 M

    Nature of injury
    6
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    6
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    599
    Human factor
    18
    Environmental factor
    8
    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.