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 #998971

ASPHYXIATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN

Event
ASPHYXIATED,WORK RULES,CONSTRUCTION,TRENCH,SHORING,SLOPING,BURIED,CAVE-IN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
998971
Report ID
552700

Event description

Employee killed in trench collapse

Investigation abstract

At approximately 11:00 a.m. on August 17, 1987, Employee #1 was preparing to lay a length of pipe in an approximately 30 ft long by 4 ft wide by 12 ft deep tren ch. The inadequately sloped and unshored west wall of the trench collapsed, bury ing Employee #1. He died of asphyxia.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 41 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    4
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    585
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    4
    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.