OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14507180

DIRT WORKS LTD

CRESTED BUTTE, CO— 1984-08-10T00:00:00

Event: HEAD, WORK RULES, CONSTRUCTION, TRENCH, SHORING, UNSTABLE SOIL, SLOPING, BURIED, CAVE-IN
NAICS: 000000
Inspection type: Accident-driven
Activity number: #1516848
Employer profile: DIRT WORKS LTD
Summary number: 14507180
Report ID: 830500

Event description

Employee buried in trench cave-in, later dies

Investigation abstract

At about 2:15 p.m. on August 10,1984, Employee #1 was in an approximately 26 ft long by 6 to 8 ft wide by 10 ft deep trench, giving grade measurements to a back hoe operator. He then stood to the side to watch the backhoe operation. The oper ator noticed a clump of dirt fall and told Employee #1 to get out of the trench. As he was trying to exit, the southeast wall caved in, completely covering him with dirt. Employee #1 suffered severe head injuries and later died. The walls w ere not shored or sloped as required by the condition of the soil.

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 21 M

Nature of injury
6

Part of body
13

Event type
1

Source
12

Occupation code
999

Human factor
1

Environmental factor
13

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.