Around 11:30 a.m. this morning, a worker was trapped in a cesspool in East Hills, Long Island—and it took four hours of rescue efforts from numerous emergency responders to get him out. WCBS 2 reports, "Assistant Roslyn Fire Chief Adam Boll says the unidentified man in his 20s was taken to a hospital in stable condition. Earlier, a police spokesman had said that the man's vital signs appeared to be good."
According to Newsday (subscription required), the hole was 35-feet deep: "Firefighters were reporting that the walls of the hole were deteriorating and unstable and could collapse. A vacuum truck used to pump out cesspools had been requested." Apparently the man was trapped up to his waist in the cesspool—and a second worker who tried to help him was briefly trapped as well. There had been some concerns the rescue efforts would last into the night, because as soon as firefighters would dig dirt out, more would fall in.
