April 18, 2008

Photo Credit: BADGER DAYLIGHTING

A Badger Daylighting hydrovac truck, similar to the one pictured here, removed almost two cubic yards of material from around a construction worker who was trapped chest-deep in dirt when a well under construction collapsed.

Badger Daylighting crew comes to rescue of trapped construction worker

VINCE VERSACE

staff writer

A construction worker trapped in a 12-foot-deep pit in downtown Toronto and buried in mud up to his chest, was saved thanks to help from a badger — Badger Daylighting that is.

“We feel pretty good about having been able to contribute to saving someone,” says Bryan Jones of Badger Daylighting, a hydrovac excavation company.

“We bill ourselves as a safety-first company.”

On Saturday, April 12, Toronto firefighters were called to a work site on Bloor Street, just east of Sherbourne Street, just after 7 p.m. Two workers had been digging a well when one worker fell in and the pit walls collapsed around him, said Captain Adrian Ratushniak of Toronto Fire Services.

Firefighters attempted to rescue the man but were unable to dig him out safely since the mud and sand around and inside the pit were unstable.

A call was put into Badger at 8:15 p.m. to assist in the rescue.

“It was determined we could not shore up the area and extricate the man,” explains Ratushniak. “The idea was to have the material and ground taken away.

There was no shoring or sloping around the pit, Jones reports and when Badger first arrived, they were asked to remove just the water from the pit. The man had been trapped in the water and mud stranglehold for almost two hours at the point.

“We removed the water and then informed them [the firefighters] we can help remove the dirt too,” says Jones.

The trapped worker was of Ukrainian descent, notes Jones, and a firefighter on scene also spoke Ukrainian. Through this interpreter/firefighter, the Badger employee was able to direct the trapped man to move the hydrovac vacuum hose around him to remove the mud.

Badger had positioned its truck 50 feet from the pit and used a six inch-diameter plastic hose to remove the water and material.

“In 15 minutes, the dirt was removed from up around his chest to down around his ankles,” says Jones. “We removed about a cubic yard or two of dirt.”

Firefighters had attached a harness and ropes to the man to help pull him up from the pit. The worker was rushed to St. Michael’s hospital and suffered non-life threatening injuries.

“We approached the Toronto area fire department around four years ago and demonstrated the services we could provide if they ever needed them,” says Jones. “We told them we are a 24-hour service and to keep us in mind. For us, this is a humanitarian service we can provide to them and not a commercial thing.”

Utilities and water and sewer watermain contractors are the primary users of the hydrovac technology that Badger provides.

Removing material from in and around buried utilities helps reduce the possibilities of underground utility strikes. Badger designs and builds its own trucks which are equipped with a positive displacement vacuum blower.

“We want them [the trucks] to do everything. We can remove 5,300 cubic feet of dirt per minute and work roughly 400 feet away from a site,” notes Jones.

“We can even move a 200 pound rock.”

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