Man Killed in Cave-In : Accident: Those who watched the rescue attempt in Laguna Beach mourn death of community activist James Davison. Another man was able to save himself.

A community activist died Wednesday after the walls of a 12-foot-deep trench collapsed while he was trying to install underground electrical wiring on his property, fire officials said.

At first there was hope of saving James Davison, a 50-year-old retired aerospace engineer, who, buried under about six feet of earth, initially was able to tell firefighters he could breathe and was all right.

“He was conscious and talking at one point,” said Laguna Beach Fire Capt. Steen Jensen. “He may have been yelling, but we could barely hear him through the dirt. Then, there was a sound of panic and we didn’t hear from him after that.”

As about 100 spectators gathered, firefighters struggled to locate Davison’s head so they could get an oxygen line down to him. Then, at 12:45 p.m., about an hour after the cave-in, a firefighter reached Davison’s wrist and determined that he was dead.

“We were hoping to get to him,” Fire Capt. Eugene D’Isabella said. “Unfortunately, time ran out on us.”

A second man in the cave-in, Dale Miller, 38, of Dana Point, was buried chest-high in dirt but managed to dig himself out after firefighters threw him a shovel. He was not seriously injured.

“All day, (Davison) had been asking me, ‘If this caves in, where are you gonna go?’ ” Miller said. “I asked him this morning, let’s get some boards to shore this thing up and he said, ‘We’re almost done.’ ”

“We only had five more minutes down there,” Miller said. “In five more minutes, we would have been sitting at the table eating lunch.”

For awhile, residents who live on the approximately one-acre property, which holds apartments and businesses, thought their landlord, Davison, would survive the ordeal.

“They thought he was going to be OK,” said resident Nancy Strouss. “One tenant actually took pictures that she was going to show him later.” She said Davison and his family were “probably the nicest landlords I ever had.”

Throughout the afternoon, about 40 firefighters labored to remove Davison’s body while standing on mounds of dirt littered with rescue equipment.

Finally, at 5:45, they pulled Davison from the trench.

“We love you, Jim,” somebody shouted from the crowd.

Beth Leeds, a frequent City Council candidate here, sobbed as the body was removed, saying: “He was a wonderful person. He was fighting to protect Laguna Canyon very hard.

“There aren’t many wonderful people like him,” Leeds said. “He’ll live on in Laguna Beach.”

Davison was founding vice president of the Historical Society, which was formed three years ago and put together a collection of historic Laguna Beach photos for the city’s Sawdust Festival last summer.

“He was a very quiet man who didn’t say much,” said Anne Frank, past president of the society. “But when he got interested in a project, he focused all his attention to it. He was very creative. He was very interested in old houses and was very knowledgeable about them.”

Frank said Davison had lived in Laguna Beach for more than 20 years and was also an active member of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy. In his youth, he often came to the city to surf.

“He still went to the beach a lot,” she said.

Frank said Davison is survived by his wife and two sons.

“We’ll all miss him very much,” she said. “It’s such a tragic, tragic accident.”

Jensen said Davison, who did not live on the property where he was working, had not obtained city permits for the project he began about two weeks ago.

Davison was installing wiring to the historic building that was Laguna Beach’s first hospital and now contains apartment units and businesses.

“There was no (trench)shoring in place, whatsoever,” Jensen said. “This was a private operation, and it is unclear whether the workers had any skill or knowledge of what they were doing.”

There were signs that the tunnel wasn’t safe, according to Miller, who was one of four men working on the project at 422 Glenneyre St.

Miller, who met Davison about a month ago and had been doing odd jobs for him since then, said they enlisted the help of two other workers after part of the trench caved in on Tuesday.

Then on Wednesday, Miller said he was standing in the trench when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw dirt begin to fall.

“I just took off running,” Miller said. “I looked back and the only thing I saw was dirt coming down.” He didn’t get far as falling dirt quickly reached his waist.

Miller said that after the cave-in, a third worker jumped into the trench and tried to dig Davison out and kept talking to him.