Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025
105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14453856

VAN BUSKIRK CONSTRUCTION

Event
SUFFOCATED, WORK RULES, CONSTRUCTION, TRENCH, UNSTABLE SOIL, BURIED, CAVE-IN
NAICS
000000
Inspection type
Accident-driven
Activity number
#2653251
Employer profile
VAN BUSKIRK CONSTRUCTION
Summary number
14453856
Report ID
751910

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was relaying a section of 30-in.-diameter concrete reinforced pipe i nto a trench that was more than 9 ft deep. After cleaning the spigot and an exis ting pipe, he started to walk out of the trench. A backhoe operator noticed the south wall beginning to move and yelled to Employee #1 to get out of the trench. Employee #1 started to run, but was buried against the north wall. He died of s uffocation due to internal injuries. The trench was dug in fill dirt and the ban ks were not shored.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 34 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    4
    Event type
    2
    Source
    12
    Occupation code
    594
    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.