Most workers picture drowning happening in a lake, a river or the ocean. In reality, water hazards for utility workers can be just as dangerous on everyday jobsites, where occupational drownings may happen in less than four feet of water — sometimes in only a few inches.

For utility crews, DPW employees, highway departments, wastewater operators and underground contractors, water isn’t an occasional hazard. It’s part of the job, every single day.

Because water is so familiar, it often gets less respect on a jobsite than electricity, traffic or confined-space entry. That familiarity has cost Massachusetts industry workers their lives — not in floods or hurricanes, but on ordinary workdays.

Twelve Feet Down, Gone in Seconds

On the morning of October 21, 2016, two workers were working in a roughly 12-foot trench on Dartmouth Street in Boston’s South End when the unsupported walls gave way. The collapse sheared an adjacent fire hydrant supply line. Water and loosened soil poured into the excavation, and within seconds the two men were trapped beneath a rising slurry of mud and water. Neither man survived.

OSHA’s investigation found the contractor had never installed a support system to prevent the cave-in, had not trained the crew to recognize the hazard, and had left the men without a ladder to escape the hole. The agency issued 18 citations and proposed nearly $1.5 million in penalties. The company’s owner was later convicted of manslaughter — and OSHA records showed the same company had been warned about unprotected trenches twice before, in 2007 and 2012.

The lesson from Dartmouth Street isn’t just about shoring, although shoring would have prevented it. It’s that a trench doesn’t need a river running through it to become a drowning hazard. It only needs a broken water main, a cracked pipe, or a hard rain — and a crew that hasn’t planned for what happens if water shows up.

Trench and excavation fatalities aren’t rare, and they aren’t confined to one company or one decade. Nationally, OSHA has reported roughly two trench-related worker deaths every month in recent years, and researchers tracking a decade of cases counted more than 250 nationwide. Massachusetts has now lost crew members to the same underlying combination — unsupported soil and water arriving faster than anyone expected — more than once.

Water Doesn’t Need to Be Deep to be unsafe

Many people assume drowning requires deep water. In reality, workers have gone under in less than two feet after slipping on a muddy slope, becoming entangled in debris, getting trapped upside down, or simply being overcome by current in a confined channel.

Moving water changes the math entirely. Six inches of moving water can knock an adult off balance. Twelve inches of fast-moving water can carry away most passenger vehicles. A drainage ditch, culvert or catch basin that looks harmless on a dry Tuesday can turn into a powerful hydraulic system during a storm — strong enough to sweep away tools, equipment, and the people using them.

This isn’t a once-a-decade concern for New England crews. The region has seen its share of intense, fast-moving storm systems in recent years — the kind that can drop several inches of rain in a short window and turn a routine excavation or culvert inspection into an emergency with little warning. A forecast that looked manageable at the start of a shift can look very different two hours later, which is exactly why weather monitoring belongs in the daily hazard assessment, not just the morning briefing.

Cold Water Changes the Equation

New England crews face a hazard that warmer-climate contractors rarely think about: most of the water on a jobsite here — in a flooded trench, a swollen culvert, a storm-surge catch basin — is cold for most of the working year. Cold water below about 70°F can trigger cold-shock response within the first minute of immersion: an involuntary gasp reflex, a spike in heart rate and blood pressure, and a sharp drop in the ability to hold your breath or swim in a straight line. None of that requires deep water to be dangerous; it only requires a worker going in over their head, even briefly, in a trench or vault that was never supposed to fill in the first place.

Swim failure follows soon after, as cold muscles and joints stop responding the way they do on land. A worker who is a strong swimmer in a warm pool can lose the ability to keep their head above water within ten to fifteen minutes in cold water, long before hypothermia itself becomes the primary threat. For crews working around flooded excavations, culverts or retention basins from fall through spring, that window is the one that matters — and it’s far shorter than most people assume.

The Hidden Hazards Facing DPW and Utility Crews

Water rarely acts alone.

When crews respond to infrastructure failures, they’re often exposed to several hazards stacked on top of each other.

Flooded excavations are the clearest example.

A trench can look perfectly stable until water starts entering it. Water weakens soil, raises hydrostatic pressure behind trench walls, and dramatically increases the odds of a cave-in — while also making it harder for a worker to get solid footing on the way out.

Storm drains and catch basins present a quieter version of the same problem.

During heavy rainfall, covers can shift or pop loose, unseen openings develop beneath the floodwater, and powerful suction can build below the surface. A worker clearing debris off a grate may not realize they’re standing directly above a system moving thousands of gallons a minute.

Culverts look harmless in dry weather and become confined, high-velocity channels during storms.

Even an experienced crew can underestimate water velocity, debris impact, sudden surges, and the erosion quietly undermining the embankment they’re standing on.

Sewer systems combine water hazards with everything else that makes confined-space work dangerous:

• Rapidly changing water levels
• Oxygen deficiency
• Hydrogen sulfide
• Engulfment risk.

OSHA has documented fatalities involving sewer workers who were caught by unexpected surges inside manholes and collection systems where proper confined-space and retrieval procedures weren’t followed.

Energized utilities add another layer that’s easy to miss.

Floodwater conducts electricity, and standing water around a damaged transformer, a submerged panel, or a downed line can turn a puddle into a live circuit with no visible warning. Crews trained to treat exposed wiring as dangerous sometimes don’t extend that same instinct to the water pooling nearby — even though the water is often what’s carrying the current.

When the Ground Itself Gives Way

Sinkholes belong on this list because they are, almost without exception, a water problem wearing a pavement disguise. A leaking water main or a failing sewer joint slowly washes soil into the pipe below, hollowing out a void that nobody can see from the surface — until the pavement above it can no longer hold its own weight.

Massachusetts has had a run of them this year alone. A water main break near the Boston Public Garden tore open Park Plaza in April 2026, buckling the roadway and shutting down streets around Arlington and Boylston. That same month, routine maintenance on an MWRA blow-off valve in Lynn caused enough ground settling to flood two nearby businesses. And during a February 2026 nor’easter, multiple water main breaks in Winthrop left part of a neighborhood underwater and swallowed a DPW plow truck in a sinkhole that opened on Marshall Street. None of it took a hurricane — just an old pipe, saturated soil, and time. It isn’t new, either: a 2024 water main break dropped a sinkhole into I-495 in Haverhill, and a failing century-old sewer line in that same city undermined the ground badly enough in 2023 to force 22 residents out of a nearby apartment building.

For a responding crew, a sinkhole is a cave-in risk that started from below instead of from a trench dug on purpose — and the edges are often less stable than they look, especially once equipment weight is added. Nobody on scene knows for certain what’s under the failed section: a gas main, another buried utility, or simply more washed-out soil that hasn’t caved in yet. Treat the perimeter of any active or suspected sinkhole the way you’d treat an unshored trench — keep personnel and equipment back until the extent of the void is known, and assume there’s more failure underground than what’s visible on the surface. Warning signs worth taking seriously before a full collapse include a new dip or soft spot in pavement, a settling curb or sidewalk, cracking that radiates outward from a low spot, and the sound of running or gurgling water beneath the road with no visible source.

A Cape Cod Reminder — and a Warning About What Water Hides

More recently, on November 18, 2025, a Yarmouth sewer-line worksite on South Shore Drive turned deadly when backfilled sand gave way and collapsed into a trench, trapping two workers. One was killed and second worker was rescued after being buried to the waist for more than four hours. Federal investigators cited the contractor, Revoli Construction, with 57 violations — including missing cave-in protection, no safe way to exit the trench, and an inadequately engineered shoring system — and proposed more than $4.6 million in penalties.

The collapse itself was a soil failure, not a flood. But water was never far from the picture at that jobsite. The Town of Yarmouth’s own legal filings against the contractor, made before the fatal collapse, accused the company of repeatedly flooding the roadway through a faulty dewatering system. And just eleven months earlier, OSHA had already fined the same company after workers were exposed to arc-flash and shock hazards from electrical extension cords left lying on wet ground at the same worksite.

That last detail is worth sitting with. Wet ground and live electrical cords is exactly the kind of hazard combination water creates without anyone noticing — not a flood, not a drowning, just ordinary dampness turning a routine tool into a shock hazard. Water doesn’t need to be the headline cause of an incident to be a contributing one.

Five Questions Every Crew Should Ask

Before anyone approaches standing or moving water, supervisors should walk the crew through five questions. None of them take more than a few minutes to answer, and all five have come up, in one form or another, in the incidents above.

1. Where can this water go? Storm drains, culverts and underground piping can redirect flow somewhere else on the site in moments.
2. Can conditions change suddenly? Weather upstream can affect a jobsite long before rain reaches it directly — monitor conditions continuously, not just at the start of the shift.
3. What’s beneath the water? Standing water can hide open manholes, broken pavement, washouts, energized utilities and sharp debris. Never assume you know what’s under the surface.
4. Do we have a rescue plan? Rescuers become victims more often than most crews realize. Everyone should know who performs rescue, what equipment is on hand, and when to call in specialized rescue resources rather than attempting a rescue themselves.
5. Are we creating additional hazards? Pumping operations, bypass systems and temporary dams can change how water moves in ways that show up hours or days later. Think about how today’s work changes tomorrow’s hazard.

Best Practices for Utility and DPW Operations

Crews that take water seriously treat it with the same respect given to energized electrical equipment:

• Perform a dynamic hazard assessment before work begins, and repeat it as conditions change.
• Keep workers out of flooded excavations whenever possible, and never enter flowing water without proper training and protective equipment.
• Follow confined-space entry procedures for manholes and underground structures, every time — not just when a supervisor is watching.
• Inspect culverts before entry and avoid entering during rain events.
• Ensure excavation protection remains effective once water is present, not just when the trench is dry.
• Treat standing water near any electrical source — panels, cords, damaged lines — as energized until proven otherwise.
• Brief new and temporary hires on water hazards specifically; don’t assume general safety orientation covers it.
• Establish emergency rescue procedures before work starts, and stop work whenever conditions move beyond the original hazard assessment.

Final Thoughts

Water has a way of disguising danger. It hides holes, weakens trenches, conceals energized equipment, masks swift currents and changes conditions in seconds. For the utility, highway and public works professionals who maintain New England’s infrastructure, these hazards show up every day — not just during floods or hurricanes.

Robert Higgins, Kelvin Mattocks and Miguel Reis all went to work expecting to come home. The safest crews understand that drowning isn’t defined by depth. It’s defined by losing control — of footing, of a rescue, of a plan that should have accounted for water in the first place.

Whether you’re repairing a water main, cleaning a culvert, entering a valve vault or responding to a storm emergency, remember the simplest safety lesson of all: water doesn’t have to be deep to be deadly.

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