Survivor Breathes a Sigh of Relief

As 150 rescuers rushed to free a trapped construction worker, they struggled against one overwhelming irony: Art Garcia risked killing himself with every breath he took.

Buried to his neck at the bottom of a 15-foot hole as a result of a pipeline construction accident Wednesday, Garcia was not seriously hurt in the initial collapse of earth.

But every time his lungs expanded, then contracted, more dirt filled in around him, tightening around his stocky frame like a slowly coiling boa constrictor.

It was a race against time--a race that rescuers didn’t win until eight hours later, when they finally lifted Garcia to safety. The 45-year-old La Puente man was nearly buried alive three times during the emotionally wrenching rescue effort.

Looking exhausted and shaky, Garcia appeared at a news conference Thursday to thank his rescuers, and God, for his life. With the soil pressing against him, he said, he knew he had to stay still as death.

“I tried to relax. If you lose control, you’d kill yourself,” said Garcia, who suffered only a strained shoulder and no internal injuries. He is expected to be released from the hospital today.

Questions and kudos abounded Thursday in the aftermath of the rescue, televised nationwide.

State and local authorities began a formal investigation, though an initial inquiry suggests the incident may have been an accident. Fire officials called for additional funding for the specialized urban search and rescue team that saved the man. And they praised two private companies that stepped forward to help.

One construction company offered a special high-powered vacuum after seeing a TV news report about the rescue efforts. “The vacuums were absolutely, monumentally crucial,” said Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Steve Ruda.

Mladen Buntich Construction Co., which was contracted by the city’s Department of Water and Power on the pipeline construction project, has been cited at least nine times for safety violations since 1991, according to Cal/OSHA records.

During one incident in 1992, a worker was crushed under a backhoe that failed to sound an alarm when backing up during a trench-filling operation. The worker lived but suffered severe internal injuries. The company was fined $5,250, records show.

Dean Fryer, a spokesman for the agency, said the violations are not excessive for a construction company the size of Mladen Buntich. He noted, however, that some of the violations were categorized as “serious,” meaning they posed the possibility of death to employees.

“It’s a higher-risk type of industry,” Fryer said. “They don’t have an extreme amount of citations.”

However, DWP officials said they don’t believe Mladen Buntich was at fault in Thursday’s incident. They were investigating the possibility that light rains or vibrations from the Metrolink trains some 100 feet away may have caused the collapse. Shortly after Wednesday’s accident, a Metrolink train was stopped as a precaution.

Mladen Buntich issued a statement Thursday thanking firefighters and other rescuers for “their extraordinary efforts.”

The $50-million project Garcia was working on is a pipeline to carry treated sewage from a DWP plant to a settling area near Hansen Dam. Once there, the treated water will slowly percolate into the soil to help replenish ground water supplies. Mladen Buntich won a $17-million contract two years ago to build part of the pipeline. There was only about 300 feet worth of work left to do before Wednesday’s ordeal.

“It looks like a freak accident, but we’ll know more later,” said Darlene Battle, a DWP spokeswoman.

The incident began when an apparent sinkhole suddenly opened beneath Garcia and two co-workers at 3:45 p.m. Wednesday, as they stood by a 25-foot-deep trench lined with vertical rust-red metal plates.

The two other workers grabbed hold of the plates for safety, stopping their descent into the sinkhole. Garcia wasn’t so fortunate, however, and fell 15 feet, becoming wedged in a space--about the width of a hard hat--that opened between two of the metal plates. Only one hand and his hard hat were visible at first.

Firefighters who arrived on the scene were able to snake an air hose to Garcia to provide oxygen. Garcia’s precarious situation quickly became apparent. He was surrounded by fine silt almost the consistency of sugar. Any sudden movement would only send more dirt into the pit.

Firefighter Sergio Franco, a member of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Urban Search and Rescue squad, was lowered into the hole about 10:45 p.m. via a pulley system hanging from a fire ladder stretched over the hole.

As he was lowered into the hole, he felt “a huge, huge adrenaline rush,” Franco said Thursday. The hole was not a safe place to be, a foot in diameter in some parts and surrounded by moist, unstable soil.

But Franco said that once he saw Garcia, he lost all trepidation. “Seeing him there, even though you know as a rescuer you are in danger, you just forget it and get a kind of tunnel vision,” he said.

Once in the hole, Franco removed the soil with an air knife, which uses compressed air to loosen dirt that is then vacuumed out. After 30 minutes, he was relieved by another firefighter, then another. Firefighters eventually dug down 25 feet in the effort to free Garcia.

The earth caved in on Garcia at least three times during the eight-hour ordeal. At one point, he was saved only by a small air pocket created by his hard hat.

During the third cave-in, Garcia was completely covered with soil. For 28 minutes, firefighters dangled above Garcia, trying to save the buried man.

At one point they saw no movement for five minutes. Then, finally, with the help of the industrial strength vacuums lent by the two private companies, they cleared enough dirt to see Garcia’s fingers. They wriggled.

City Firefighter Chris Castellanos was the man who finally pulled Garcia out. Like Franco, Castellanos speaks Spanish, and part of the reason he was called upon was to ensure the best possible communication for the bilingual Garcia.

When Castellanos arrived within arm’s reach of Garcia, he made sure to keep chatting, trying his best to assure Garcia that the rescuers would not give up until he got out safely. Every five minutes or so he would take a quick break from digging and squeeze Garcia’s hand.

The strength of Garcia’s grip assured Castellanos that he was dealing with someone who would make it through. “I could tell he was very strong-willed, the need to survive is what ended up saving him.”

In the hole, Castellanos and Garcia exchanged banter. “He talked about getting home with his family. That’s all he wanted, to just get home to them,” Castellanos said.

“I assured him he would.”

Finally at 11:45 p.m., in the 30 final minutes of struggle, Castellanos freed Garcia. Castellanos says what surprised him most was the way Garcia looked when he got out: hardly battered, still relatively strong, talking about going somewhere to get a stiff drink.

After the rescue the firefighters talked of the bond they felt with Garcia, and they marveled at his strength.

“Usually when we rescue someone they are so afraid they freak out and end up even endangering the rescuer,” said Franco. “But this guy was like Superman, he was so calm and had a special will to live . . . that’s part of the reason he’s here today.”

At the noon news conference at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, Garcia recounted what was going through his mind while trapped under the earth.

Alternating between Spanish and English, Garcia said he thought about his wife, Celena, and their three young children. “Who will sustain them? Who will make my house payments?”

Celena Garcia watched the drama unfold on television at their home in La Puente. Mladen Buntich, Garcia’s employer, had called to tell her that it was her husband of 14 years who was buried alive.

Through an interpreter, she said she did not go to the scene because she knew there was nothing she could do there. “I always had faith in God that he would come out and be OK,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “The children felt everything would be OK.”

Meanwhile at the accident scene, Garcia continued to cling to life.

“It wasn’t until the last second that we knew for sure that he would get out,” said County Fire Department Capt. Larry Collins.

“This guy escaped death over and over again last night. He cheated death at least a dozen times,” Collins said.

Times staff writers Julie Ha, Michael Luo and Patrick McGreevy contributed to this story.