Laguna Beach Man Killed in Trench Cave-In

A well-known community activist died Wednesday after the walls of a 12-foot 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. Davison, buried under about six feet of earth, initially was able to tell firefighters that 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.”

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.

A second man, Dale Miller, 38, of Dana Point, was covered with dirt up to his waist by the cave-in but managed to dig himself out after firefighters threw him a shovel. He was uninjured.

“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.”

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

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

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

Fire Capt. 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.