OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14530422
FORTE BROTHERS INC
WARWICK, RI—
Event description
Employee injured when earth around trench gives way
Investigation abstract
At approximately 8:00 a.m. on April 11, 1985, Employee #1, a foreman, was at gr ound level directing a backhoe operator where to excavate earth from an 8 to 10 foot deep trench. The soil was a loose sand and a trench box had been installed within the last week. As the backhoe bucket took a scoop from the trench bottom, the earth outside the box flowed into the hole. The earth under Employee #1's f eet gave way in a funnel effect, and he was buried up to his head.
Victim
-
#1 Non-hospitalized injury Age 58 M
- Nature of injury
- 3
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 42
- 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.