A 78-year-old man was trapped for nearly an hour and a half after a trench that he was helping to dig for a residential sewer line collapsed on him. The accident occurred around 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 22 in the 11500 block of Patriot Lane off of Seven Locks Road in Potomac.
The man was rescued by members of Collapse Rescue and Urban Search and Rescue teams from Montgomery County Fire and Rescue. The victim was transported to a local hospital in serious but stable condition with non-life threatening injuries that may have included broken ribs, said Pete Piringer, a spokesperson for Montgomery County Fire and Rescue.
A work crew of five or six men was laying pipe for the sewer line and was in the process of backfilling the trench with a backhoe when the man jumped into the trench to check on something. Shortly after the man jumped into the six-foot-deep trench, it collapsed on him covering him nearly completely. Some of the other workers jumped into the hole at great risk to themselves and were able to clear some dirt away from the man at which point he was covered from the chest down, Piringer said.
Between 50 and 60 rescue workers used metal piping, ropes and rigging to re-stabilize the trench and extract the victim, Piringer said.
"We had a lot of good expertise on the scene," said Piringer.
The danger to victims in such situations is the pressure put on their bodies while they are trapped. The pressure put on the body and the extremities can lead to a condition referred to as compartmentalization that can have long-term detrimental effects on organs and the body’s circulation, Piringer said. These problems often don’t arise until weeks or months after such an accident and can be worse in older victims.
"Weeks or months from now it bears watching because you may have some issues," said Piringer.
Such trench collapses happen roughly once a month around the region, Piringer estimated and are typically the result of a trench not being properly stabilized during digging. It is not known yet if that was the case in this incident.