Oxford Township Trench Collapse: Worker, 50, Freed After 4 Hours, Now Released From Hospital

A construction worker buried up to his waist for more than four hours after a trench wall gave way in Oxford Township has been released from the hospital, one day after a rescue operation that drew close to 100 first responders from across Oakland County.

The Oakland County Sheriff's Office said the 50-year-old man, who is from Swartz Creek, was working in the 20 block of Brabb Road when the trench collapsed around 3:46 p.m. Tuesday. He was employed by an excavation company working on a sanitary sewer extension project in the Brabb Dewey subdivision, west of M-24.

Oxford Fire Chief Matthew Majestic said the man was walking alongside the trench when the "lip" of the excavation gave way beneath him. "He basically slid down," Majestic said, ending up roughly 12 to 15 feet from where the edge had collapsed, pinned next to a trench box that had been placed in the excavation to prevent wall failures. That box, Majestic said, likely kept his injuries from being worse.

Firefighters were called to the scene around 4:45 p.m. and spent the next several hours working to free him. Crews kept verbal contact with the man throughout, and Majestic said he stayed in good spirits and could move his toes as rescuers worked around him. The soil at the site, a mix of sand, rocks and gravel, made the extraction slow going. Responders first shored up the trench with panels to keep it from collapsing further, then brought in a vacuum truck to pull loose soil away from the area where he was trapped.

"It was all hands on deck," Majestic said.

The Oxford Township Fire Department, which Majestic described as a roughly 40-person operation, called in Oakland County's technical rescue team once it became clear the job was beyond what local crews could handle alone. The sheriff's office confirmed its Search and Rescue Team also responded with specialized equipment, and a technical rescue team from the western part of the county joined as well. Majestic estimated between 75 and 100 responders took part in the operation, with departments arriving under mutual aid agreements from across the region.

The man was freed shortly after 8 p.m., more than four hours after the initial call. Majestic said that once he was loose, he insisted on climbing out of the trench under his own power rather than being carried. He was in stable condition at that point, according to the sheriff's office, but was flown by medical helicopter to Corewell Health William Beaumont University Hospital in Royal Oak as a precaution.

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard credited the coordination among the responding agencies for the outcome. "This successful rescue is a testament to the integrated training and coordination of multiple teams that provide this area with unique rescue capabilities," Bouchard said in a statement. "I am proud of the teamwork and the partnerships."

Majestic thanked the outside departments that sent help. "A big 'thank you' to all of the mutual aid partners that came out to help us," he said. "We don't have the equipment or the manpower" to manage a rescue of that scale without assistance, he said.

The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration was notified of the incident and will determine the official cause of the collapse, according to the sheriff's office. No timeline for that review has been released.

No one else was injured in the collapse, and the man was the only person trapped.

The incident is the third trench collapse reported in Oakland County since late June. On June 30, a 35-year-old worker was hospitalized after being trapped for more than half an hour when a trench wall collapsed at another Oxford Township work site, on Barber Road. The next day, two more trench collapses were reported in the county, including one that injured a Clarkston man. That same day, July 1, a 23-year-old worker died at a construction site near Fowlerville in Livingston County, according to state fatality records.

MIOSHA's review of Tuesday's collapse will determine whether the excavation company followed required trench safety protocols, including shoring and soil classification standards meant to prevent wall failures like the one that trapped the Swartz Creek worker. No findings from that investigation have been made public.