KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — UPDATE: (April 18.) The Knoxville Fire Department confirmed the second person involved in a trench rescue has been rescued. A spokesperson with the department said the first person who was rescued earlier has been discharged after being taken to UT Medical Center. Both men have been rescued.
"It was a very labor-intensive process to get these two gentleman out of the trench," said Mark Wilbanks, the Assistant Chief of the Knoxville Fire Department.
The Knoxville Fire Departments' Technical Rescue Team took the lead on the rescue mission.
"Our men and women are having to build basically boxes in the trench to shore it up and make it safer. And then they have to start digging, and sometimes that means little garden-like shovels," Wilbanks said.
He said it's a time-consuming process because they don't want to add any additional pressure to the people trapped — or risk the trench further collapsing.
They said at around 3 p.m. on Monday that crews started working on the 800 block of East Inskip Drive for a "technical rescue" and asked people to avoid the area.
Wilbanks said the two men trapped were construction workers. They were working to repair leaking water pipes. He said the trench they were in was about six feet deep, but they were initially trapped about four feet under.
They said one man was "minimally trapped," while most of the other man's legs were trapped. They said both men were awake and talking Monday afternoon.
By 6:05 p.m. they said one of the men was removed from the trench, while the other was still trapped.
According to Wilbanks, crews started trying to rescue the men at around 1 p.m. with several agencies responding. They said the rescue is particularly gentle because they were trapped in loose gravel and they did not want to risk accidentally burying anyone. The spokesperson said they expected the men to be out of the trench by 7 p.m.
"The city of Knoxville Fire Department does this free of charge. It's part of our taxpayers' dollars that are at work here today and this is what we do. And we're just glad that we're the people that can be here for the folks in Knoxville," Wilbanks said.
Tennessee OSHA also said they opened an investigating into the trench collapse. they said an investigator will determine the circumstances that led to the men being trapped in the ditch by surveying the scene, reviewing company records, and conducting interviews.
They said the investigation can take up to eight weeks to complete.