On April 10, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Region 5 office announced an outreach effort in the Midwest to stem the continuing trend of trench and excavation worker deaths.
The 39 U.S. workers who died doing trench or excavation work in 2022 included 4 in Illinois and 2 others in Ohio, according to OSHA. From 2011 to 2018, 166 workers died in trench cave-ins, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data—an average of 21 each year.
The Midwest region said it would work directly with employers, workers, state agencies, and industry associations to reduce and prevent serious injuries and fatalities.
“A trench collapse can bury workers under thousands of pounds of soil and rocks in seconds, making escape and survival often impossible,” Bill Donovan, OSHA’s Region 5 administrator, said in an agency statement. “With proper training and use of required safety procedures, incidents like these can be prevented. OSHA and industry employers are working hard to raise awareness of hazards and protective measures and educate employers on how they must protect workers.”
The outreach campaign is supported by the regional office’s collaboration with state workplace safety and health agencies and consultation programs in the region: Indiana OSHA and INSafe: Safety and Health Consultation; Michigan OSHA and Michigan Consultative Services; Minnesota OSHA and the Minnesota Workplace Safety Consultation Program; and the Illinois On-Site Consultation Program, Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation On-Site Consultation Program, Wisconsin On-Site Consultation Program, and employers and other stakeholders in the trenching and excavation industry such as the National Utility Contractors Association and Wisconsin Utility Contractors Association.
Indiana, Michigan, and Minnesota have OSHA-approved state workplace safety and health programs, and Illinois has a state plan that covers local and state government workers. Federal OSHA has private sector enforcement authority in Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
The regional office reminded employers and workers of essential trench safety requirements:
- Protective systems must be in place for trenches 5 feet (ft) deep or deeper. Protective systems include benching, sloping, shoring, and shielding.
- A registered professional engineer must approve trenches 20 ft deep or deeper.
- A competent person must inspect trenches daily and as conditions change before anyone enters a trench. The competent person must be able to identify existing and predictable hazards, soil types, and protective systems and have the authority to take prompt corrective action to eliminate trench hazards.
- Excavated soils must be kept at least 2 ft from trench edges.
- Underground utilities must be located and marked before digging begins.
- Ladders must be positioned every 25 ft of lateral travel for safe entrance and exit from the trench.
OSHA has an ongoing national emphasis program (NEP) to address trench and excavation collapses, and it announced plans last year to conduct 1,000 trench and excavation inspections nationwide in response to the spike in trench fatalities in 2022. According to the agency, federal OSHA conducted 311 trenching and excavation inspections in 2022 at sites in Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Trench fatalities can also lead to criminal prosecutions. On March 3, local law enforcement in Connecticut arrested 2 people in connection with the fatal collapse of an 8-ft-deep trench in July 2022, and in 2021, a Colorado state court sentenced a contractor to 10 months in jail for a fatal 2018 trench collapse at a Granby, Colorado, worksite.