The Los Angeles Fire Department rushed to Wilmington after a tunnel collapsed and trapped 27 people inside.
Four other workers went in after the collapse to help the others. The construction workers inside the underground tunnel were rescued roughly an hour after the collapse, according to L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who represents the area.
“Every day that he goes in there, we don’t know if he’s going to come out. It’s a dangerous job for anyone who goes down there,” said Chelsea Fernandez, the wife of one of the workers rescued.
None of the 31 construction workers rescued in the tunnel sustained visible injuries, according to LAFD. Firefighters said construction workers climbed over a roughly 12 to 15-foot pile of dirt to escape.
“I just spoke with many of the workers who were trapped,” Mayor Karen Bass wrote in a post to X. Thank you to all of our brave first responders who acted immediately. You are L.A.’s true heroes.
LAFD sent a massive amount of resources, including all of their Urban Search and Rescue teams, to the 1700 block of South Figueroa Street. Firefighters said the collapse happened as many as six miles away from the sole access point of the tunnel.
“The City of Los Angeles has mobilized resources to the tunnel collapse in Wilmington,” Bass wrote in a post to X. More than 100 LAFD responders have been deployed, including Urban Search and Rescue teams. Thank you to all of those who are acting immediately to respond to this emergency.”
The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, also known as Cal/OSHA, said it is investigating the collapse. It noted that inspectors have six months to issue citations for any violations.
“This, unfortunately, is the only accident during the construction,” Los Angeles County Sanitation District spokesman Michael Chee said. “This project has been in active construction for over two years now. It’s been in planning for much longer than that.”
The collapse happened at the $630.5 million Los Angeles Effluent Outfall Tunnel, which is part of the Los Angeles County Sanitation District’s Clearwater Project. The project has been placed on an indefinite hold as authorities continue to investigate the cause of the collapse and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
KCAL News 
Flatiron Dragados, the prime contractor for the construction, wrote on its website that the tunnel is 7 miles long, about 18 feet wide and 450 feet below ground level. The company wrote that the new project will enable crews to repair aging wastewater management tunnels constructed in 1937 and 1958.
Crews were expected to complete the tunneling aspect of the project by April 2025, according to documents from the L.A. County Sanitation Department from July 2024. County staff aimed to complete the project by 2027 and activate the new tunnel by January 2028.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
