Tuesday, July 27, 2010 While responding on a routine brush fire, approximately 1/4 Acre in size, we noticed a pile of building materials (primarily fiberglass corrugated roofing material) had lit off as well. as we were peeling the layers of material back, one of our firefighters (who works for an excavating company) noticed there was a "hole" underneath and notified me of the situation immediately. Upon further examination, using pike poles, we uncovered a trench that was approximately 10' wide, 20' long and almost 30' deep. The homeowner was building some sort of bunker on his property with absolutely no shoring or stabilization in place. He said he stopped digging when he hit water! It had multiple fishers and a slough on both sides, and on the side my guys were standing on initially was almost 5' back underneath the very ground they were standing on. Thankfully, no one fell in or was injured. We immediately pulled everyone back from the trench and notified the County Fire Chief to come out and make a decision on what to do. The Homeowner had no building plans no permit and had not notified his homeowner’s insurance company of this bunker. To immediately rectify this situation, we barricaded the area off and placed plywood around all edges and utilized some fence panels the homeowner had on scene to cover the bunker up until the proper authorities could come out and investigate.


LESSONS PLANS: We realized real quick that some trench classes are in order and also, more importantly, to increase our situational awareness while operating on any emergency scene because you never know what you will find or what you are going to encounter. This was a routine, everyday, bread and butter call that turned into much more at the drop of a hat. We very easily could have been working a trench rescue if one of our guys had even stood on the building materials.