Deaths Due to No Protective System
Case Reports
The following Case
Reports of trenching accidents investigated by OSHA illustrate how seemingly
innocent workplace activities can have deadly consequences.
- Two employees
were installing 6" PVC pipe in a trench 40' long x 9' deep x 2' wide.
No means of protection was provided in the vertical wall trench. A cave-in
occurred, fatally injuring one employee and causing serious facial injuries
to the other.
- An inadequately
protected trench wall collapsed, killing one employee who had just gotten
into the trench to check grade for installation of an 8" sewer line.
The trench was 20-25 feet deep and had been benched about one bucket-width
(4 feet) on each side. At the time of the collapse a backhoe was still
extracting soil from the trench.
- Four employees
were in an excavation 32' long x 7' deep x 9' wide boring a hole under a road.
Eight-foot steel plates used as shoring were placed against the side walls
of the excavation at about 30-degree angles. No horizontal bracing was
used. One of the plates tipped over, crushing an employee.
 |
Back to Top
www.osha.gov
