LOUISVILLE (AP) – Firefighters in United States’ Kentucky’s largest city rescued a construction worker on a demolition team who fell into a void and became trapped in rubble, requiring a tedious, hourslong operation to dig him out.

The rescue was shown live on local Louisville television stations hours after the worker fell into a hole and debris fell on top of him around noon. Paramedics were on hand to place the worker onto a stretcher, cover him with a blanket and transport him to an ambulance.

One rescue worker patted the worker on the back as he was being hoisted out.

Louisville Fire Chief Brian O’Neill said the worker was conscious and alert when he was rescued after being “completely buried” three to 3.7 metres below ground. He said the worker hadn’t been able to move but was able to communicate in Spanish with multilingual members of the team.

“He was in a lot of pain,” O’Neill said. “This is a pretty severe accident.”

The worker was taken to the University of Louisville Hospital, where his injuries were being assessed.

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg called it an “incredibly difficult trench rescue”, and said he had met with the victim’s mother to update her on his condition. The family was waiting to see the man at the hospital on Thursday night. A hospital spokesperson did not respond immediately to an e-mail query about the worker’s condition.

The man had been part of a demolition team working at the site and fell into what the fire chief described as a “void space”. Five other workers were with him at the site of a former corrections building that is being demolished to make way for a medical campus.

The rescue team – specialised in trench rescue and confined space rescue – arrived within minutes, O’Neill said.

“He got very fortunate that he had a little bit of a void space around him,” O’Neill said. “So he was able to breathe.” The fire chief said the worker was buried and pinned in place by gravel, dirt and large chunks of concrete, which required the rescue team to dig him out by hand, clearing the area around the man’s arms and chest so he could receive medical aid. He said rescue workers also used a vacuum truck with a large pipe to suck up smaller debris, and they used propane tanks to push hot air into the hole to keep the worker warm.

“We are moving tonnes and tonnes of debris by hand, by buckets,” O’Neill said, describing the process. “Imagine a person at the bottom of a funnel. You have to shore up everything else that’s going to keep cascading down to create a safe space and then continue to dig this person out.”

Rescuers continued to work through Thursday evening after night fell. Officials had a crane and ladders going into the hole, which was several feet wide. The worker was freed around 8.30pm.

The fire chief called it a “very long, very tedious, very slow-going process to do it safely, to make sure that you do not cause additional injury to the individual”.

Once the firefighters got the worker out, it was a “tempered celebration”, O’Neill said.

“This is what our firefighters do,” he said. “This is why we took this job. We want to help people. And it’s not like the movies.”

-- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin