One worker noticed a large crack in the soft dirt of an unprotected wall of a utility trench. He and the other worker in the trench at that time were told to use caution…but continue working.
The subsequent collapse of that unprotected wall killed a man and earned his employer nearly a quarter of a million dollars in fines from Cal/OSHA.
Investigators for the state agency said Livermore-based contractor Platinum Pipeline, Inc. committed willful-serious safety violations by instructing employees to continue grading the bottom of the trench without providing any protection, even after identifying the soil as unstable.
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 New York City construction foreman has been found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment in the death of a worker last year.
An Andover, Massachusetts water and sewer line contractor is facing $65,800 in fines after OSHA inspectors discovered its workers toiling in a six-foot-deep trench that was not properly shored.
A New York State Supreme Court judge ordered a general contractor to either create a TV public service announcement or pay a $10,000 fine for its role in the death of an employee at a construction site.
A coalition of general contractor companies is among the nearly two dozen groups urging a New York Supreme Court judge to give a construction company owner the maximum sentence for a worker’s death.
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.
