Crews rescued a worker who was trapped in a trench in Allentown, Pennsylvania, after more than eight hours during bitter cold temperatures on Wednesday.
The 27-year-old private contractor and his co-worker were working on sewer lines in the backyard of a Lehigh Valley home on West Gordon and North Fulton streets shortly before 2 p.m. when the trench caved in.
Firefighters responded to the scene. The first worker was able to climb out when firefighters lowered a ladder. The second worker remained buried up to his chin in the trench, which was 12 to 15-feet deep.
Rescuers used buckets and other tools to slowly dig around the man in order to ease the pressure of the dirt as they worked to pull him out. The man remained conscious throughout the rescue efforts.
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"It's extremely difficult because there's so many other things that can go wrong," Allentown Fire Captain John Christopher told NBC10. "That's why before we ever go into the trench, just things like air monitoring. We have to monitor the atmosphere in the trench first. We have to then place the shoring before any of our guys got down. Then as soon as we're able to get down, we've got EMS personnel."
The worker's wife, pastor and parents were at the scene speaking with the man throughout the rescue. Onlookers also gathered near the scene and prayed.
Crews were concerned about the man catching hypothermia during the cold temperatures in the evening and worked to keep him as warm and comfortable as possible.
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“We used forced hot air through heaters that are specially adapted for rescue,” Technical Rescue Team Commander Jon Hammel said. “Just a propane heater. But like I said, it’s something special for us. That’s how we heated the trench itself and then we also had blankets down in the hole with him and we also initiated IVs and were running warm fluids into his body.”
Finally, at 10:18 p.m., rescuers pulled the man out of the trench while SkyForce10 was over the scene.
He was placed in an ambulance and taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest where he was listed in stable condition.
And, the man has a big reason to be thankful to have made it.
"And because every story deserves a happy ending… shortly before we were able to lift him out of the trench, the rescued man’s wife told him she was pregnant with their first child," the City of Allentown posted to Facebook.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is currently investigating the incident. The worker's employer is the Allentown-based company Ed Simon Contracting LLC. The company was previously called Simon Contracting, Inc. A search of that name on OSHA's website shows violations issued on May 12, 2016, that were classified as "serious."
"It was a planned inspection in 2016, as part of OSHA’s regional emphasis program on trenching, that resulted in 3 serious violations involving trench excavation hazards and a final penalty amount of $5500," an OSHA spokesperson wrote.
NBC10 tried to reach Ed Simon Contracting for comment but could not find them at two separate addresses. A telephone number listed for the company was not in service.
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