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 #976324

TRENCH BOX,WORK RULES,TRENCH,LACERATION,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN,CONTUSION,PUNCTURE

Event
TRENCH BOX,WORK RULES,TRENCH,LACERATION,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN,CONTUSION,PUNCTURE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
976324
Report ID
551800

Event description

Employee killed during trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

At about 5:00 p.m. on February 23, 1988, Employee #1, a construction worker, was laying pipe at the bottom of a trench that was 15 feet deep, 133 feet long, and 44 to 48 inches wide when a wall caved in. The trench did not have shoring, a t rench box, or sloping. Employee #1 was buried up to his neck. He sustained numer ous lacerations, punctures, and contusions to the front part of his face, arms, and body. He had one abrasion to the back side of the body. Employee #1 died of multiple blunt force injuries.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 40 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    4
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    869
    Human factor
    20
    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.