OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14486138

GOULD PLUMBING COMPANY, INC.

BRONX, NY— 1985-04-17T00:00:00

Event: SUFFOCATED, WORK RULES, CONSTRUCTION, TRENCH, VIBRATIONS, SHORING, UNSTABLE SOIL, SLOPING, CAVE-IN
NAICS: 000000
Inspection type: Accident-driven
Activity number: #1011543
Employer profile: GOULD PLUMBING COMPANY, INC.
Summary number: 14486138
Report ID: 215600

Event description

Employee killed in trench cave-in

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was in an approximately 18 ft deep by 5 ft long by 3 ft wide trench, trying to break open an unused sewer line to plug the end going into an active sewer line. When he struck the cast iron pipe, it began to vibrate. This apparen tly caused the walls of the trench to collapse, burying Employee #1 to his waist . When coworkers tried to rescue him, the walls collapsed further and completely buried him. Employee #1 died of asphyxia due to suffocation, aspiration of gast ric contents, and mechanical compression of the body.

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 25 M

Nature of injury
2

Part of body
19

Event type
2

Source
12

Occupation code
999

Human factor
1

Environmental factor
6

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.