OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #977116
KNEE,FRACTURE,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,UNSTABLE SOIL,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Event description
Employee injured in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was in a 35 ft long by 24 in. wide trench with a top paved surface o f 7 in. thick asphalt. He was checking the grade fall at the bottom, about 10 ft below the driveway level, when the side walls of the trench caved in, covering him with damp dirt to approximately 1 ft over his head. Coworkers on site called the rescue squad and then started to dig him out, a process that took approxima tely 3 1/2 hours. After being removed from the trench, Employee #1 was transport ed to the emergency room at Granger Hospital, where he was admitted with a fract ured knee. The trench was being used to install a 12 ft storm drain to an intern al sewer drain at the southeast corner of a building under construction.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 56 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 15
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 585
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 13
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- 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.