Starkville Fire Department crews and other first responders work to rescue workers from an accident at a construction site on South Montgomery Street, south of the Maison de Ville subdivision, on May 19, 2020. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has fined Alabama-based Southern Civil Contracting, Inc. $17,000 for safety violations after investigating the accident, which killed two construction workers when a boulder fell off the trench on top of them, according to OSHA inspection documents. Dispatch file photo
An Alabama construction company is facing a roughly $17,000 fine from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration following a workplace accident that killed two construction workers in Starkville last year.
trench collapses in December.
The fatal collapses for the month were reported in Georgia, Virginia, South Dakota, Michigan and California.
Those fatalities bring the year’s construction trench-collapse death toll to at least 21, which is the same as in 2019, according to reports compiled by Equipment World from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and news media. (Cumulative OSHA data on trench-collapse deaths have not been released for 2019 and 2020.)
Trench-collapse deaths among construction workers appear to be rising slightly since 2018. There were 17 fatalities that year being investigated by OSHA and state agencies, according to the NIOSH Science Blog.
A breakdown of construction trench fatalities between 2003 and 2020 shows that – outside of 2016, when there was a decade-high of 33 trench deaths – 2019 and 2020 are tied for the second-deadliest years since 2010.