How crews saved a man from a trench in Allentown
ALLENTOWN, Pa. (CBS) -- After being stuck in a trench for roughly eight hours, crews were able to pull a man in Allentown to safety. He remains in the hospital on Thursday night.
Firefighters dug by hand to rescue the worker. He was buried in dirt, up to his chin, after a trench collapsed.
"When it came in as a trench call with entrapment, more often than not, that's a recovery," Capt. John Christopher, of the Allentown Fire Department, said.
But in this case, it was a rescue. It took fire crews eight hours to get a construction worker freed from a trench in Allentown. When they arrived around 2 p.m., all they could see was his head.
"He was kept as comfortable as possible because we knew it was going to take a long time. Much of the digging had to be done by hand," Christopher said.
"It's loud and it's scary," Jonathan Hammel, a rescue commander, said. "They can't see a whole lot, especially in the beginning when only his head was visible."
Hammel was in the trench with the trapped worker. First, they had to pump heat into the hole. They also gave the worker fluids and warm food to maintain his temperature.
"We just keep in constant communication with the patient so that we know they're maintaining correctly and they're informed of everything that we're doing," Hammel said.
In addition to keeping the worker's morale up, they also had to shore up the new walls to make sure the trench didn't collapse again."
"We can't just put someone in the trench, in the hole," Christopher said. "We have to make sure it's a safe environment before putting someone in there...you could make a bad situation worse."
It's unclear when the worker will be released from the hospital, but his wife told him they're expecting their first child together, so at least he has that to look forward to.