https://fox4kc.com/news/i-couldnt-b...in-trench-up-to-shoulders-for-nearly-4-hours/ Looks like 18' deep in a trench box. Lucky to get to go home.
Lucky no doubt. Interesting to see what contributed to the collapse when the real reports of the incident comes out. Local news reporters are horrible at reporting what actually happened.
That was really easy to figure out. He wasn't in a trench collapse. He simply stepped off the ladder on the top edge of the box and then slid down between the box and the bank. A little bit of the bank came down with him and he was just wedged down there. There's no way he was actually buried up to his shoulders and survived. He was absolutely right to be fearing for his life because the bank could take him at any time against the hard surface of that trench box. That is one of the problems that we face doing excavation is access. You can dig the hole you can get the box set but now how do you get the ladder in there and how do you safely get to the ladder? The logical answer is to backfill the box but nobody wants to really do that because sometimes you have a heck of a time getting them out of there! So people take shortcuts. It's just what they do they leap across to the top edge of the box and then climb down the ladder or screw around with a scaffold plank or some other half arsed maneuver.
I don't know what actually happened as I obviously was not there. It's not that hard to create safe access to a trench box. Fab up some 2x's and 3/4 plywood into a walkway to get to the ladder inside the trench box. We used a similar walkway to access a box culvert we installed last year. Only ding we had from the Safety Director was it was not anchored to the culvert.
I listen to the interviews from the guy involved in the accident and he said, " I stepped onto what I thought was solid ground and it gave way" . I'd bet that he was outside the box and fell into that no man's land. It's one of those areas where I tell people who want to help to just please stay back let me set the box. I drag a corner or bounce it off something and get it spinning to where I want it and set it they try and reach in there and put a hand on, the next thing they know, they're underneath it after sliding down the bank! No thank you. Now I've got a box in the air over top of some Poor smuck who is only trying to help.
Sounds like they were doing the old climb down and walk around, ie we're to lazy/cheap to build or rent a catwalk.
A shore bridge is cheap in my opinion and it makes access faster cause you dont have to second guess your footing or backfill the box Anyone that's to cheap to do it right anymore wont last in today's commercial market cause one accident like that gets you barred from a lot of bids for gc and had it been what could potentially happen no insurance company will touch you