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 #976662

FRACTURE,LUNG,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,CAVE-IN

Event
FRACTURE,LUNG,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
976662
Report ID
551800

Event description

Employee injured during trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

The building of a new road had been in progress for about 6 weeks when the culve rt trench was dug on October 25, 1988. There were only two men on the site as it had rained heavily just two days before the accident and only culvert work coul d be done. The trench was 2 feet 8 inches wide at the bottom, approximately 4 fe et 2 inches wide at the top, and 6 feet deep for a distance of 25 feet in length and with the trench a total of 60 feet in length. The trench was dug in brown c lay. A large piece broke off the east wall, struck the employee, and pinned him against the west wall. Employee #1 sustained a collapsed lung and three broken t eeth.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 33 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    869
    Human factor
    17
    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.