2 construction workers rescued from collapsed trench in Bethesda

County rescue teams pulled two construction workers from a trench that collapsed near a Bethesda home on Tuesday.

It took Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Services teams took two hours to extract one of the workers, who had been buried up to his head. A state police helicopter took him to a shock trauma center in Baltimore, according to Pete Piringer, a fire department spokesperson.

Fire Chief Corey Smedley said the rescue was “the most beautiful outcome you can ever have.”

“The entire chain of survival worked,” he said. “We assessed the situation. We came up with a plan. Both people are doing well and they will be evaluated at the hospital.”

It took crews about half the time to rescue the other worker, who had been buried up to his waist. He was taken to a local trauma center.

“Before we could even get all the dirt away, the second victim actually came out of the ditch himself,” Smedley said.

Both men had been working at a trench alongside a home in the 8100 block of Kentbury Drive near Newdale Road.

The dirt “caved in on top of these workers,” Piringer said in a video posted shortly after 1 p.m. The trench, he said from the site of the rescue, was between 10 and 12 feet deep and 2 to 3 feet wide.

Emergency workers were called to the scene at about 12:15 p.m. and used buckets to remove dirt from the trench as they talked to the trapped men. But they told the men not to speak to avoid exerting themselves. The man in dirt up to his head had a pocket of air to breathe, Smedley said.

“The guys were not in a good place when we got here,” Piringer said.

Smedley said it’s not clear what the construction workers were doing in the trench or what caused the collapse.

Anna Moody, who has lived in the neighborhood for a decade, said she saw one shirtless man taken away from the site of the collapse on a stretcher.

“I’m looking forward to learning more about what happened, but mostly just hoping everybody is OK,” she said.