Tragedy-

TMatt142

Remember...EVERY trench that has been excavated will eventually cave in unless of course it's rock or maybe hardpan. It may be 3 days or three years...but it WILL cave in. That was told to me by an OSHA inspector and it should stick in all operators and excavation contractors minds.

Little

As the super on the job, it is you that will face penalty if your operator is digging a trench that is unsafe or is not utilizing a box below 5ft and someone is seriously inured or even worse killed. We had an incident maybe 10 years ago involving a serious accident. We were diggin up north were it was real rocky and also a ton of real big dirt boulders. Our operator was digging the trench correctly, shelfing back one bucket wide in a 5 foot trench. One of the dirt boulders broke loose and rolled right down into the laborers side and hip, fracturing his hip bone. It all went the courts, etc. We were not found to be at fault but the medical expenses and stuff had to be dealt with.

I don't know how many times i have to yell at my operator for not shelfing the trench correctly, its like it goes in one ear and out the other. The other thing is some of our laborers, they will go into the trench with it above their heads and shelved straight down, i'll come up and be like get **** outta that trench right now!!! Sheesh, don't they understand w/o me having to tell them what could happen.