By Kathleen Magramo, Alaa Elassar, Stephanie Elam

(CNN) — Thirty-one men working in a massive underground tunnel in Los Angeles were rescued Wednesday night after a portion of the structure collapsed, officials said.

Those rescued didn’t have any visible injuries, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement, shortly after an operation that saw several of those trapped in the industrial tunnel hoisted up to safety by crane.

The collapse occurred approximately five miles from the sole entry and exit point of the tunnel and about 400 feet below ground, officials said. The tunnel is part of a municipal wastewater project.

The trapped workers managed to climb over a 12- to 15-foot-high pile of loose soil to reach coworkers on the other side, preliminary reports indicate. From there, they were transported by tunnel vehicle to the access point, the fire department said.

Arally Orozco was attending church when her phone rang over and over again. Moments later, she received a text from her son, alerting her that the tunnel where her three brothers worked had collapsed, The Associated Press reported.

“It was sad and scary,” she told the AP in Spanish. “We feared the worst.”

One of her brothers was able to reach her after an hour had passed. They were able to squeeze through a tight space to get out, he told her in tears.

“My brother was crying,” Orozco said. “He told me he thought he was going to die underground.”

More than 100 LAFD responders raced to the scene in the city’s Wilmington neighborhood to assist in the operation, including Urban Search and Rescue teams, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said on X.

Firefighters used cranes and rescue cages to hoist several workers out, according to video from CNN affiliate KCBS/KCAL.

The rescued workers were traumatized but thankful to be alive, Los Angeles County Board Supervisor Janice Hahn said at a news conference late Wednesday.

“We got to meet many of the men who were alive and happy, but they were all shaken up,” Hahn said. “It was quite traumatic for them to go through that.”

“The first thing they did was call their family members,” she added. “They were also light about it, like you would expect when you’re in a situation that’s very tense that you know could have ended in a tragedy, and it didn’t. There’s a celebratory sense that people made it out.”

Bass also met with the rescued workers and emergency responders on the scene, according to a video posted to her X account. “Thank you again to all our first responders working to get Angelenos to safety,” Bass said.

The failure occurred when workers were operating the tunnel boring machine and a section they had already built collapsed due to “squeezing ground,” Robert Ferrante, chief engineer and general manager of the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, said at the news conference.

Squeezing ground occurs when the ground or soil deforms significantly during an excavation.

To escape the tunnel, the men had to return to the point of collapse and walk through it before getting into a vehicle that brought them out to the shaft site, according to Ferrante.

“It was a tense situation. Anytime you have a collapse in a tunnel behind you, there was only one way out at that time, it’s to come back here to the shaft, so they had to come back and make their way through the damaged section of the tunnel,” Ferrante said.

“It was very scary, as I just want to reiterate, we’re very fortunate,” he said.

The workers were highly skilled, well-trained and able to immediately recognize what steps to take in the emergency situation, said Tim McOsker, the current councilman for Los Angeles City Council District 15, at the news conference.

“This is a highly technical, difficult project, and they knew exactly what to do. They knew how to secure themselves,” McOsker said. “They knew how to get to the train that brought them back. They knew all of the signals as we spoke to them.”

Under development for years, the tunnel being built is part of the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts’ Clearwater Project, which is designed to replace two large tunnels that carry treated effluent water to the ocean.

The current tunnels, which are 60 and 80 years old, are not up to current earthquake standards and “cannot be taken out of service because they must continuously carry flow,” according to the county’s website.

These tunnels are part of the county’s main sewer system that treats wastewater from more than five million people in the Los Angeles Basin. The new tunnel will be seven miles long and “constructed almost entirely underneath public right-of-way (streets),” with completion expected in 2027, according to the website.

Work on the site will be stopped and inspected, Ferrante added, but he did not elaborate on how long it will take.

Hahn said the incident serves as a reminder of the risks involved in these projects and that the sanitation districts would “look into” what caused the incident.

The-CNN-Wire
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