Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
A man who was trapped for a time this morning at a construction site in the Murray-Taylorsville area is now in the hospital with a possible broken ankle.
Rescue workers say two men were working below a rock retaining wall when the ground gave way and the wall collapsed, sending about 40 blocks tumbling down.
One man escaped, but the other was trapped by one of the blocks. It landed on his ankles while a Bobcat above the wall hovered dangerously over him.
A heavy rescue team was called in and first had to shore up the Bobcat with long poles and lumber. They then used airbags and more poles for leverage to get the block off the injured man.
"He was immensely stressed out, yes he was. And you know, all we do is, we talk to our patients, reassure them that they're going to be fine," said Murray Deputy Fire Marshal Russ Groves.
When crews got him out, the man was taken to the hospital in stable condition.
"He's very lucky. You can see there's a lot of blocks down there, and each one of those blocks weighs about 25 hundred pounds a piece. So, it was a very lucky situation, and I think he's going to be fine," Groves said.
He told rescue crews he felt lucky it wasn't worse. "He says, ‘I don't know how I made it through this.' He really thought this was it," Groves said.
Officials say they don't know yet what made the ground give way, but they imagine the company building the town homes will investigate what went wrong.
E-mail: mrichards@ksl.com
E-mail: ngonzales@ksl.com
