ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — A trench collapse at a construction site proved to be one of the more challenging rescue operations for veteran St. Johns County firefighter-paramedics when a trench wall caved in, trapping a worker and injuring his leg.
First responders were called to the scene behind a Home Depot under construction on World Golf Village Parkway on Dec. 27, First Coast News reported.
Engineer-Paramedic Lance Robinson, along with Firefighter-Paramedic Greg Kelly, undertook a rescue unlike anything they had ever encountered before.
Robinson and Kelly said the man’s colleagues told them the dirt wall caved in, pinning him against one of the large black pipes in the hole. Workers were able to free him from the dirt, but they could not lift him out of the 10-foot-deep trench, First Coast News reported.
“There’s nowhere flat that you can put a ladder (or your feet) on and have it stay steady, so we were trying to mitigate that as best as we can,” Kelly said. “There was a lot of straddling, slipping and sliding.”
“We were able to transfer him into the Stokes Basket, and with ropes, we were able to guide the Stokes Basket up the ladder,” Robinson told First Coast News. “We were pushing from the rear as the guys up top were pulling.”
After an hour-long effort, the man was successfully freed from the trench, though his current condition remains unknown.
“He was grateful to be out. Definitely grateful to be out there,” Kelly said.
St. Johns County Fire Rescue routinely trains for these types of rescues.
Robinson and Kelly expressed their gratitude for the training, noting that this was the first time they had applied the skills learned during their specialized schooling in a real-life rescue, First Coast News reported.
