A cemetery on Long Island was fined more than $123,00 by the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration last month after one of its employees was accidentally buried during a cave-in at a grave he was digging.
The incident occurred May 7 at the St. Charles/Resurrection Cemeteries in Farmingdale, New York, about an hour west of New York City on Long Island. The worker was manually digging in a gravesite when the walls suddenly collapsed, burying him up to his waist. The worker suffered serious injuries, according to an OSHA news release.
Unsafe Work Conditions
Federal safety investigators determined that the work site had not been properly secured with anti-cave in equipment. They also determined that there was damaged equipment and that the excavated soil had been improperly placed on the side of the unprotected trench.
“These conditions exposed employees to the hazards or cave-in, engulfment, and struck-by injuries,” the news release stated.
The cemetery’s owners were cited with two willful and three serious violations of workplace safety standards and fined $123,200 by OSHA, according to Anthony Ciuffo, the agency’s Long Island director.
“This worker literally came close to an early grave because the cemetery failed to provide proper excavation protections,” Ciuffo said. “This cave-in could have been prevented if proper and legally required trenching safety procedures had been followed by the employer. It is imperative that St. John Cemetery Corp. ensure that workers at all its cemeteries are protected against cave-in hazards and ensure that an incident such as this does not happen again in the future.”
Rules for Trenching
OSHA trenching standards require all excavation deeper than 5 feet to be protected against collapse.
Soil is extremely heavy and can be fast moving if not supported. A single cubic foot of soil weighs about 114 pounds and a cubic yard weighs about 1.5 tons, or about the same as a Volkswagen Beetle.
A worker buried under only a few feet of soil can be crushed by so much pressure that the lungs can’t expand and suffocation can occur in as little a three minutes. Soil that is wetter and heavier can crush the body in just a few seconds.
Protective systems reduce the likelihood of soil cave-ins that can fall or roll into an excavation. They also are used to support nearby structures to prevent collapse caused by the excavation.