A worker was rescued Wednesday after being trapped in a hole at a construction site on the Lower East Side.
The worker was working on a pipe outside of a building at the intersection of Clinton and Grand streets when a 10-to-12-foot trench collapsed around him, burying him up to his chest in soil and rock.
The FDNY says before they arrived on scene, his co-workers helped to clear soil away from his face and dig him out up to his waist. The FDNY then used jacks to stabilize the hole and used a harness to pull him out.
"As part of the teamwork, they were able to get access to the patient in the hole very early and were able to assess the patient and start treatment right away," said Dr. Glenn Asaeda, the FDNY's chief medical director. "In such confined spaces, with a lot of weight on the patient, this being the trenched dirt, we're always worried about truss syndrome, so we need to treat these patients as early as possible."
The worker was taken to Bellevue Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The FDNY said the rescue took about an hour.