NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) -- A Brooklyn construction worker was hospitalized Tuesday after he was rescued from a trench collapse that buried half his body in rubble, city officials said.
The trench gave way and swallowed the worker shortly before 9:45 a.m. at a construction site near Flushing and Harrison avenues in Williamsburg.
The worker was conscious when firefighters arrived at the scene minutes later, but he was buried up to his waist in dirt in what fire officials described as a "man in hole/confined space incident."
"He was working on the foundation of the building and some of the dirt collapsed and trapped him up to his waist," FDNY Deputy Assistant Chief John Sarrocco said.
Crews worked for nearly an hour to free him from several feet of debris.
"What we did was support the trench with some wood cribbing, we tied the victim off with a harness from a high-point anchor and we started to work to extricate him from the hole," Sarrocco said.
Sarrocco said the FDNY called Con Edison and asked them to bring over a vacuum truck, "which is able to vacuum up some of the dirt around the victim in order to extricate him."
"We also sent a rescue medic down into the trench to support any critical care that the victim may have needed," the chief said.
The worker was removed from the hole by 10:40 a.m. He was evaluated at the scene by EMS and then taken to a hospital in critical but stable condition. He's expected to survive.
Twelve FDNY units and 60 firefighters responded to the rescue.
The work site is a new, 52-story building that's in the excavation stage, according to the Department of Buildings, which responded to the site.
DOB inspectors at the scene determined the worker fell 6 to 7 feet off of a ladder after the ladder was hit by a piece of equipment that was being hoisted by an excavator, officials said.
Inspectors issued a summons for "failure to institute safety measures" after they found a "lack of coordination between the hoisting operation and the rest of the work crew," according to the DOB.
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