Workers Buried Alive

摘要

Trained rescuers say there is little that most construction workers can do for a colleague trapped in a collapsed trench-until the professionals arrive. That reality was more than evident when firefighters arrived at a sewer line construction site in Goldsboro, N.C., on June 27, 2003. A worker was buried with only his hand and wrist visible above the huge pile of dirt in a 15-ft-wide by 8-ft-deep trench that had just collapsed. "His buddies had a Ditch Witch about the size of the ones they use at a cemetery," says David Grice, an engineer with the Goldsboro Fire Dept. engine company that responded to the emergency. "They were about to crank it up and dig him out." But wary of possible consequences of that maneuver, Grice ordered the workers to turn the equipment off and step aside. "They would have killed him," he says.