Trench that killed two Delta Junction workers had no cave-in protection

The trench that buried and killed two Delta Junction workers last month had no cave-in protection of any kind, according to the state's own fatality alert.

The alert, published by Alaska Occupational Safety and Health, says two maintenance employees of a local medical clinic were replacing a septic tank when a sidewall gave way. "The employees were laying pipe in a trench that lacked any protective systems; no benching, sloping, or trench box was in use," it says. Responders ran a technical rescue, using an excavator to move the soil, and recovered the workers only after determining the trench was safe to enter.

Alaska News reported the deaths on July 31, when troopers identified the dead as Paul Hebert, 68, and Jacquelyn Wilder, 71, both of Delta Junction, and said only that the cause was under investigation. The trench was roughly 13 feet deep. What the alert adds is the finding about the trench itself.

The federal excavation standard, which Alaska adopts, requires that every worker in an excavation "be protected from cave-ins by an adequate protective system," with only two exceptions: excavations cut entirely into stable rock, and those less than 5 feet deep where a competent person finds no sign of a potential cave-in. At roughly 13 feet, the Delta Junction trench would not qualify unless it had been cut entirely through stable rock, and the alert does not say what the soil was. Its own prevention recommendations tell employers to use benching, sloping or a trench box in any excavation deeper than 5 feet.

Enforcement opened the next morning. State inspectors opened two inspections July 31 at Family Medical Center in Delta Junction, one for safety and one for health, both flagged under the national trench emphasis program. Neither record carries a violation as of data current through Aug. 12.

The alert itself names only "a local medical clinic," so the tie to that establishment rests on matching date, place and incident type. No statement from Family Medical Center or any other employer representative appears in the records reviewed, leaving the clinic's account of the worksite and its protective systems unaddressed in the public file. A fatality alert is written inside an open investigation, and citations, if any follow, would come later.

The alert is the fourth Alaska fatality alert of 2026 and the only one classified as construction. The log lists three for all of 2025.