Two workers killed after trench collapse in Mississippi | Dump Truck Company
Two workers died after a trench collapse May 19 in Starkville, Mississippi.
Zachary Wayne Osbourn, 36, and William Kizzire, 19, both from Alabama, were on a residential sewer installation job for Southern Civil Contracting of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, when the 10- to 12-foot-deep trench they were in collapsed, according to news reports.
Osbourn died at the scene. His body was recovered after a lengthy rescue by the Starkville Fire Department. Kizzire was still alive when he was rescued from the trench but died after being removed.
Southern Civil Contracting had been cited by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 2010 for trench-related violations and paid a fine of $788, according to The Dispatch newspaper in Columbus.
The company’s owner, Shane Henderson, was also president of the now-defunct Gilco Contracting in Tuscaloosa, the newspaper reports. The company, which folded in 2013, was issued 27 OSHA citations between 2005 and 2008, The Dispatch reports, and in one incident, a worker’s arm was amputated after a trench collapse in 2006. In all, Gilco faced penalties totaling $530,500, with the amount reduced to $258,735 after it contested the cases, according to The Dispatch.
For more on the business and human costs of trench-collapse fatalities, see Equipment World’s special report Death by Trench.