Dive Brief:

• A 42-year-old man working on a home-building crew in Bethesda, Md., died Monday after he was pinned between an excavator and the house being built.
• The Castlewood Builders employee was operating the small, tracked machine when it tipped and he was somehow caught between the machine and the building.
• Coworkers got him out, but he died at a hospital.

Dive Insight:

This machine operator's death follows a week that saw two tragic accidents in the industry. This time, the incident occurred at a residential construction site in what authorities characterized as a freak accident. We often associate construction deaths with larger machines than the small excavator being used in Maryland, and they are more often at commercial projects like the demolition job in St. Paul, Minn., where a backhoe operator was crushed beneath falling concrete.