OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #221541220
WBW CONSTRUCTION, LLC
JARRELL, TX—
Event description
Two employees are killed during trench collapse
Investigation abstract
At 9:30 a.m. on June 28, 2022, two employees were leveling sewer pipe in a soil type determination of soil type being stable; additionally, he requested ladders the day before the collapse, as they did not have tall enough ladders to install the trench boxes. The soil type results from the Salt Lake City Lab were type B for all 3X soil samples gathered at the site and sent in for analysis. The afternoon before the trench collapse it did rain, and photos taken by the CSHO and police department revealed water in the bottom of the trench. trench. The two employees were in a trench that had a depth of approximately 23 feet deep and 34 inches wide, with no protection system. The trench had straight vertical walls. The closest mean of egress for the two employees was approximately 132 feet from where they were working. The foreman began cutting across the trench to dig a smaller trench (side cut) for joining pipe to be laid. The trench collapsed, and the two employees that were in the trench were killed. There were 3X trench boxes (8 foot x 24 foot) on site, but they were not used. The foreman chose to work with vertical walls for the trench due to his
Victims (2)
-
#1 Fatality Age 21 M
- Event type
- 1
- Occupation code
- 869
-
#2 Fatality Age 40 M
- Event type
- 1
- Occupation code
- 7010
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.