If just a few more feet of loose soil fell from the tunnel ceiling, 27 Los Angeles digging contractors would have been trapped.
As it happened, tragic headlines were denied those last few feet, and with the help of their comrades on the other side, all 27 men escaped from last Thursday’s partial tunnel collapse with their lives.
The contractors were employees of Flatiron Dragados, a firm that’s currently tunneling 450 feet below the city of Los Angeles on a major, half-billion dollar sanitation project dubbed Clearwater. At 18-feet wide and 7-miles long, it’s an immense undertaking to transport treated wastewater from a plant in Carson to the ocean.
Around 8 p.m. local time, the soil in the ceiling portion of the tunnel began collapsing down behind 27 men who had the large tunneling machine in front of them. The collapse occurred 6 miles from the only access point to the tunnel.
Various first response and emergency services rushed to the scene, including all the city’s urban search and rescue teams, but fortunately there was a space of about 3 to 4 feet through which the 27 men crawled to escape, all while 4 of their colleagues on the other side worked to enlarge the gap.
An hour later, all 31 walked out unharmed.
“I just spoke with many of the workers who were trapped,” Mayor Karen Bass wrote in a post to X. “Thank you to all of our brave first responders who acted immediately. You are LA’s true heroes.”
Tim McOsker, the current councilman for Los Angeles City Council District 15 who sits on the sanitation board, said the men, mostly engineers and electricians, were highly-trained by Flatiron Dragados. They recognized the situation and responded orderly and effectively to escape.
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“This is a highly technical, difficult project, and they knew exactly what to do. They knew how to secure themselves,” said McOsker, said at a news conference. “They knew all of the signals as we spoke to them.”
The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, also known as Cal/OSHA, said it is investigating the collapse. The project will be put on hold until the investigation is concluded.
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Tunnels like these are built at the same time they’re being dug, with cement walls and ceilings being laid after the boring machine has passed. Speaking with CNN, Robert Ferrante, chief engineer and general manager of the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, said the cause of the incident was “squeezing ground” which occurs when the tunneling and cement laying deforms the structure of the soil considerably.
Assuming no major delays from the incident, the Clearwater Project, meant to replace aging wastewater infrastructure, will be opened by 2028.
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