By Lomi Kriel and Brian Chasnoff
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 2007 San Antonio Express-News
All Rights Reserved
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Lawrence Martinez thought he was going to die.
While laying a sewer line for a Northwest Side development Wednesday, the 32-year-old was more than 15 feet below the surface of the ground when a trench collapsed around 11:30 a.m., nearly covering him completely.
Another worker was slammed into the trench wall but managed to pull himself out; later, he was treated for a head injury at University Hospital.
But Martinez practically had disappeared under dirt.
Spotting his head, Martinez's co-workers started digging around him with their hands.
"His mouth was getting trapped with dirt," said Noel Panniagua, his supervisor and owner of Plumbing Contractors Co., the subcontractor hired to lay the lines for the more than 100 homes slated for the lot in the 11000 block of Belair. "We were trying to clean around his neck so he would be able to breathe."
Soon, they had cleared the dirt around his eyes and face, and Martinez, now able to speak, joked weakly about his bosses owing him lunch.
Within minutes, he was freed to his knees.
But firefighters, arriving at the scene, halted that effort for fear the rest of the trench would collapse, District Fire Chief Randy Jenkins said.
Instead, 55 San Antonio firefighters began a painstaking task that would take nearly six hours. Shoring the trench with plywood and poles to prevent further collapse, two firefighters at a time used shovels to dig the dirt out little by little.
Martinez was given an IV filled with oxygen and glucose. A fan blasted fresh air into the trench.
"People think, 'Why does it take so long to pull a guy out of 2 feet of dirt?"' Jenkins said. "It's not just 2 feet of dirt, it's that he's at the bottom of a 15-feet excavation."
Firefighters perform about two such rescues a year, Jenkins said, calling them especially dangerous because of the slipping soil.
As Martinez's sister watched anxiously from the sidelines, his 60-year-old mother paced circles back home, waiting for a ride.
"I was just, like, going crazy," Andrea Martinez said. "They didn't want to take me over there because they thought I would have a heart attack."
About 5 p.m., just after she hitched a ride with her son-in-law, firefighters cleared enough dirt around Lawrence Martinez's ankles to make a move. Strapping him inside a concave, wire structure, firefighters used ropes to pull him to the top, where he was transferred to a stretcher and taken to University Hospital.
He appeared to have suffered only a broken ankle and toe, his family members said.
But as they smoked cigarettes and drank Sprite outside the waiting room late Wednesday, some of his relatives questioned whether enough had been done to ensure Martinez's safety.
Some soil had caved in at the site Tuesday, but Panniagua, the supervisor, said it was minor. He had checked the walls of the trench both days and they appeared solid, he said, with no cracks. As regulated by safety rules, staggered benches descended into the trench.
Martinez was preparing the deepest level before they could shore up its walls, Panniagua said.
Officials with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are investigating the case.
For Andrea Martinez, however, neither the length of the rescue nor who was at fault for the collapse was at issue.
"I don't have enough words to say thank you," she said, clasping her hands together. "He's safe."
