OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #977645
FRACTURE,INSTALLING,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,CAVE-IN,ANKLE
Event description
Employee breaks ankle when buried in trench cave-in
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 and three coworkers were installing a PVC connector pipe in a trench ; the pipe was to connect to a previously installed concrete manhole. The 13 ft 5 in. by 15 in. PVC pipe section was lowered into the trench, which was 20 ft lo ng by 6 ft wide and 8 ft 9 in. deep. When Employee #1 went down to connect the p ipe to the manway, the side walls caved in, covering him to the top of his head. He was removed from the trench by fellow employees and then transported to a lo cal hospital where he was admitted with only a broken ankle. No shoring or any o ther protective means had been in use to prevent a cave-in.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 32 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 11
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 12
- Occupation code
- 599
- Human factor
- 9
- Environmental factor
- 18
- 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.