Fall Into Well Felt Endless, Victim Says

The ground opened up and swallowed Jesus Martinez on Wednesday.

Or so he thought.

The 21-year-old day laborer was helping another landscaper roll a wheelbarrow up a hill in Rancho Santa Fe when he fell into a 50-foot hole being dug for a septic tank.

Martinez, who decided in mid-air that he was probably going to die, said time slowed as he fell.

“To tell you the truth, when I was in the air I thought that hole was never going to end,” Martinez recalled Wednesday night from his hospital bed, recovering from a fractured ankle and back pains. “That well had no end.”

Actually, it did. Martinez landed on his feet in knee-high water--alive.

And in pain.

“That water was cold,” Martinez said. “It started to hurt.”

His fellow worker, who had watched in consternation as Martinez disappeared after moving a plywood plank on the ground out of the wheelbarrow’s path, called 911.

Firefighters arrived 20 minutes later and found they would need a crane to get Martinez out, Wood said.

Then a police officer contacted San Diego Gas & Electric employees he spotted working with a crane at the intersection of El Camino Real and Los Morros, about a half mile away, to help in the rescue, SDG&E; officials said.

SDG&E; workers A.L. McDaniel and Mike Springer positioned the truck close to the hole and lowered a boom into the opening, SDG&E; officials said.

Firemen threw a vest fitted with metal rings down to Martinez, who hooked himself to the crane and was lifted from the hole, officials said.

Martinez was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla. He was reported in good condition with a fractured ankle and back pains, hospital officials said.

“The guy looked pretty much petrified, and I can’t blame him,” said Springer. “I don’t feel like a hero or anything, but I am glad we helped. It was something you would do for anybody.”

Martinez, who lives in Vista and finds work wherever he can, appeared serene Wednesday. He was less interested in discussing his brush with death than who was going to pay his hospital bills.