‘Shaken up’: 31 workers scramble to safety after tunnel collapse in Wilmington

The frightening partial collapse of an L.A. County sanitation tunnel under construction left 31 workers scrambling to make their way to safety on Wednesday evening.

The only entry point to the tunnel is near the 1700 block of North Figueroa Street in Wilmington, where more than 100 L.A. Fire Department personnel were dispatched after reports of the accident, including search and rescue teams specially trained and equipped to handle confined-space tunnel rescues.

All of the workers were able to safely make it out of the tunnel, which is six miles long and 400 feet underground.

“We are all blessed today in Los Angeles, no one injured, everyone safe,” said L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who met with the rescued workers. “I am feeling very good that this is a great outcome to what started as a very scary evening.”

The workers were in an 18-foot-diameter tunnel more than five miles from the Wilmington access point when the partial collapse occurred, said interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva at a news conference late Wednesday.

There were 27 men inside the tunnel at the time of the collapse, according to Robert Ferrante, chief engineer for the L.A. County Sanitation Districts. Four others then entered in an attempt to assist their fellow workers.

The debris did not completely fill the tunnel, and the men were able to climb back through the area where the collapse took place.

“Any time you have a collapse in a tunnel behind you, there is only one way out. … So they had to come back and make their way through the damaged section of the tunnel,” Ferrante said. “It was very scary. We are very fortunate no one was hurt.”

Bass said she had an opportunity to speak with the workers and ensure they were able to reach their family members, several of whom had waited anxiously at the scene.

The accident took place in the Clearwater Project, which is designed to carry treated, clean wastewater from the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant to the ocean.

Prior to the accident, the tunnel was expected to reach Royal Palms Beach by the end of the year, at which point it would be seven miles long. The plant is the largest wastewater treatment plant owned and operated by the L.A. County Sanitation Districts.

This is the first major incident that has taken place since construction on the project began in late 2019. Work on the tunnel itself started in 2021.

But that work is paused for the foreseeable future, Ferrante said on Wednesday night. The contractor will need to go in and assess the condition of the tunnel leading up to the area that collapsed, ascertain what went wrong and figure out how to fix it.

“There’s no telling how long that will take,” he said. It’ll take as long as it needs to make sure that the tunnel is safe.”

Supervisor Janice Hahn, L.A. City Councilmember Tim McOsker and Congressmember Nanette Barragán also came to the site of the rescue operation late Wednesday.

Hahn said that it was a traumatic incident for the men, who emerged from the shaft “alive and happy” but also “all shaken up.”

Hahn, who sits on the board of directors for the sanitation districts, said the organization would be looking into what happened and everything that could be done to prevent a similar incident from taking place again.