Badger Construction: OSHA inspections and violations

Incident on Oct 24, 2015 (fatal): Employee is caught in between a trench and trenching equipme

At 1:30 p.m. on October 24, 2015, an employee was engaged in trenching operations, which included tasks such as dust mitigation, taking depth measurements of the trench, dislodging any foreign objects that may be caught in the chain of the trenching machine (Trencher Tesmec, Model: 1150 XHD). A coworker, operator, of the trencher stated that the employee was to the exterior of the machine spraying water near the point of operation, to mitigate the dust. The operator did not provide an explanation as to why the employee was working within five meters from the trenching machines point of operation. The operator stated that prior to the incident, the employee worked at a safe distance from the point of operation, and when the operator looked down at his control panel in the cab of the machine, he looked back up to locate the employee, and did not see him. At that point, the coworker/operator hit the emergency stop button, and later identified that the employee had been caught in between the boom and trench. Per the Coroner's autopsy report, the employee was killed from injuries sustained by the incident. incident.