An alarming leap in excavation and trench-related fatalities has made reducing them an Agency Priority Goal for OSHA for 2018. The agency plans to accomplish this by increasing awareness of trenching hazards in construction, educating employers and workers on safe cave-in prevention solutions, and decreasing the number of trench collapses.

A trench collapse in San Antonio, Texas last week killed a worker and endangered crews and co-workers who were trying to save him.

Acting on a complaint in June 2016, OSHA found employees of one of the Verona, New Jersey area's largest general contractors working in an unprotected 10-foot deep excavation at a suburban New Jersey high school, in violation of federal safety and health laws. OSHA announced today it has issued citations for nine violations - one willful and eight serious - to The Landtek Group Inc., a New York-based general contractor that specializes in sports facility design and construction. The company faces $197,752 in fines as a result.

OSHA has cited a Sioux Falls, South Dakota excavating contractor for five serious safety violations after the agency's investigators found a 40-year-old equipment operator suffered severe injuries while working in a 16-foot-deep trench on Oct. 28, 2016.

A New York City general contractor was found guilty Friday of manslaughter in the trench-collapse death of a worker last year.

OSHA issued citations to Alabama-based Stephens Plumbing for one willful and four serious safety violations. The agency initiated the inspection as part of its National Emphasis Program on Trenching and Excavation after an inspector saw workers in a trench without protection.

A Middletown, Pennsylvania contractor has been cited for multiple violations and fined $41,000 after a trench cave-in sent one of its workers to the hospital.

Twenty-one-year-old Jacob Casher was still a "new guy" employed by a Beaver-based plumbing company when he left home for work in September 2015. He probably never imagined that, as he worked to install a sewer line 11-feet underground in Butler, it was to be the last day of his life.

A complaint that an employee had been partially buried when an excavation collapsed brought OSHA enforcement officers to a Glennco Excavating, Inc. construction site in Missoula, Montana.