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 #994806

CHEST,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,STRUCK BY,UNSTABLE SOIL,KIDNEY,CAVE-IN

Event
CHEST,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,STRUCK BY,UNSTABLE SOIL,KIDNEY,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
994806
Report ID
452110

Event description

Employee killed in trench wall collapse

Investigation abstract

At approximately 10:00 a.m. on April 24, 1988, Employee #1 and two coworkers wer e working in a trench, which had been open for approximately two hours. They had been in the trench for approximately one to five minutes when the trench walls collapsed. Employee #1 was struck in the chest and kidneys, and was killed. Extr emely dry soil conditions contributed to the hazardous condition of the trench.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 23 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    26
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    889
    Human factor
    18
    Environmental factor
    4
    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.