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 #992925

CLEARANCE,HEAD,HARD HAT,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,STRUCK BY,BACKHOE

Event
CLEARANCE,HEAD,HARD HAT,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,STRUCK BY,BACKHOE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
992925
Report ID
253630

Event description

Employee killed when struck in head by road culvert

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was part of a six-man crew that was pulling an old 12 in. diameter, lvert. As the pipe was hoisted it resisted momentarily and then snapped from its resting place toward the two men. The ends were bouncing up and down as the ope rator stopped all motion. Both men were fleeing the site when Employee #1, who w as not wearing a hard hat, was struck by the culvert behind his right ear. He su stained a fractured skull and was killed. The backhoe's position at 45 degrees n orth of center caused the culvert to snap in that direction. 40 ft long corrugated steel culvert from an open road crossing. The crew was usi ng a backhoe parked on the center line of the road. A 12 ft 3/8 in. alloy chain was connected at one end to the teeth of the bucket on the backhoe and chocked a round the culvert at the other. A 20 ft section was hoisted without incident. Th e remaining 20 ft section was chocked at the north end with the chain sling but as the operator began hoisting the pipe bent upward and the chain moved to the b ent area, 6 ft from the north end. Employee #1 and a coworker were standing on t he south end of the road crossing, about 10 ft away from the south end of the cu

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 51 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    1
    Source
    24
    Occupation code
    869
    Human factor
    10
    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.