Buried Alive, He Eludes Death : Rescue: Co-workers praised after digging man out of sand and cement at construction site, reviving him with CPR.

A Santa Ana construction worker who was buried alive inside a sand hopper talked Wednesday about his encounter with death and what it feels like to be reborn.

Manuel Ramirez, 49, praised co-workers who dug him out and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation to save his life Tuesday at a construction site in Rancho Mission Viejo.

Doctors at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo said Ramirez was unconscious with no pulse or heartbeat and was moments away from death. Ramirez, a father of four, was in good condition in the hospital’s intensive care unit and was to be released today.

In an interview from his hospital bed, Ramirez talked about being sucked into the sand hopper and feeling four tons of sand and cement tumbling on him, plunging his world into darkness.

“I kept trying to breathe, but I felt this heavy weight on me,” Ramirez said. “I couldn’t see or hear anything, but I wanted to stay alive. But the more I fought, the deeper I got. I prayed, ‘Please God, help me, or if I’m gonna be over with, then just let it be. . . .’ ”

Moments before, Ramirez and three co-workers were working to get a dry mixture of sand and cement to flow smoothly down the sand hopper’s chute and onto a conveyor belt, where the material is mixed with water before being loaded as concrete onto waiting trucks.

Ramirez, whose work earned him his firm’s Employee of the Week award last month, said he had climbed up the 25-foot-high sand hopper to unclog the funnel-shaped container when he felt himself being sucked into the material as if in quicksand.

In seconds, he was completely buried and everything around him was dark. He tried to cover his nose, but his hands were wedged to his sides. He tried to hold his breath, but could feel the sand and cement shoot up his nose.

Determined to stay alive, Ramirez tried to wiggle his body, but only felt himself being buried upright and going deeper into what he feared would be a sand-filled steel coffin.

“I lost all my strength and I felt helpless,” Ramirez said. “I began to pray, but then I began to (drift off), and I was thinking that this is how people feel when they are about to die. . . .”

But Ramirez’s co-workers, including 36-year-old Robert Welshiemer of Rancho Cucamonga, reacted instantly when they saw that the laborer had “just disappeared in a split second,” Welshiemer said.

He and two co-workers grabbed shovels and worked frantically to dig the sand and cement from the bottom of the hopper. After what seemed like five minutes, Welshiemer spotted Ramirez’s boot through the 2-foot opening at the bottom of the hopper.

Welshiemer and a co-worker identified only as Dave heaved and pulled Ramirez through the narrow opening between the hopper and the conveyor belt.

The two checked Ramirez’s pulse and listened for a heartbeat, but could find none.

“He was blue and purple and covered with sand and cement (that) filled his mouth, ears, and nose,” Welshiemer said. “We lay him across the conveyor belt and took turns at performing CPR and (compressing) his chest and abdomen.”

After a few minutes, Ramirez coughed up handfuls of sand and cement and began to breathe. “He started to mutter things like, ‘Praise God,’ ‘Thank God,’ and ‘I love Sylvia,’ ” Welshiemer said, referring to Ramirez’s wife.

Paramedics arrived by helicopter about 10 minutes later at the remote construction site, 4 miles north of Ortega Highway, and flew Ramirez to the hospital.

The men are employed by Steve P. Rados Inc., a Santa Ana construction company contracted by the Santa Margarita Water District to install a 6 1/2-mile water main from Rancho Mission Viejo to Oso Parkway.

Dr. Marcello A. Borzatta, who treated the injured man, said Ramirez suffered a few fractured ribs and a bruised left arm and right eye.

“He is an extremely lucky man,” Borzatta said. “But this is an excellent example about how learning CPR can save lives. He would not have made it if his friends did not know how to perform CPR.”

Dr. Thomas Shaver, head of the hospital’s trauma unit, said county residents should take note of Ramirez’s experience and learn CPR.

Shaver said the majority of the eight toddlers who drowned in swimming pools and spas in the county last year would have been alive if they had been given CPR before paramedics arrived.

Welshiemer, who said he learned CPR while working in coal mines in New Mexico, insisted that he deserves no special plaudits.

“We just didn’t give up trying to revive him,” he said. “If I’m in that position, I would want people to do the same for me.”

To Ramirez, Welshiemer and the others who saved his life are heroes.

“They’re so special,” Ramirez said. “Now that I’ve seen (death) and come back, everything is so special. . . . I feel like I’m born again.”