MARS — Mark Mashuda Excavating has been fined $147,000 over an accident that occurred earlier this year.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the excavating company for federal safety violations after an employee was trapped in a collapsed trench March 31.

Two citations were listed as “willful,” which the agency’s website defined as an employer “either knowingly failing to comply with a legal requirement (purposeful disregard) or acting with plain indifference to employee safety.” Another citation was listed as “serious.”

“This trench collapse should have never happened,” said Christopher Robinson, director of OSHA’s Pittsburgh Area Office in a news release. “It is completely inexcusable for an excavation contractor not to provide cave-in protection for all employees working in trenches,” he said.

“OSHA will not tolerate employers not meeting their legal responsibility.”

Company officials did not return calls seeking comment.

The investigation started after an employee was trapped 10-feet deep in a trench collapse. Mark Mashuda was installing sanitary sewer lines off Marburger Road for the Peachmont Farms Development in Evans City.

The man, whose identity has not been released, was buried up to his waist, and it took nearly three hours for him to be rescued. He was taken to a Pittsburgh hospital in stable condition.

OSHA said in its findings the 13-foot-deep excavation had “inadequate or no protective system in place.”

“Although an 8-foot-high trench box was in place in the sewer main trench, it did not adequately protect the 13-foot-deep trench,” OSHA’s news release said.

Additional trench boxes were on site, but weren’t in use at the time of the incident.

OSHA also cited the company because of employees working outside of the trench box, and it said the walls of the excavation were not benched or sloped.

This isn’t the first time Mark Mashuda Excavating has been in trouble with OSHA.

The company was inspected twice in 2013 and was fined for multiple violations each time.

In February 2013, it was fined $4,000 for two “serious” violations found at a work site in Allison Park, Allegheny County.

In November of that year, the company was fined $10,560 for two “serious” violations and one repeat violation while digging a sewer line on Estates Drive in Gibsonia, Allegheny County.

The fines for both work sites later were reduced to a total of $10,080.

“These types of hazards are preventable,” said Leni Uddyback-Fortson, regional director of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Public Affairs in Philadelphia.

She also encouraged workers who feel they’re being exposed to hazardous conditions to contact OSHA.