CATONSVILLE, Md. — Co-workers tearfully embraced outside a home in Catonsville - a job site that became the scene of a rescue mission on Friday. A construction crew was reinforcing a wall when it collapsed on them, trapping two men in the trench they had dug.
Baltimore County Fire Department Lieutenant Shawn Drees recalls how every rescue mission starts with hope.
"There’s no way to know what the conditions of these individuals are. We know we have a large amount of stone, debris, and dirt that could have potentially impacted them. But at the same time, through case studies and previous incidents, we know there are survivable void spaces that occur in building collapses so we hope and pray that they somehow ended up in one of those and we just tunnel until we can locate them under the assumption that they are still alive in there."
Crews used cameras to try and get eyes on the victims in the trench; one of the men was found pretty early on in the search.
"Unfortunately there was no ability to make communication and there was enough of a visual on the individual to confirm they had passed away. With the second individual, with where they were located we were never able to get a search camera into that position," Lt. Drees recalled.
Once they shored up the existing structure to make sure it didn't collapse further, firefighters were able to go into the basement, de-layer the foundation wall, and locate the second man, also deceased.
Police identified the victims as 24-year-old Emerson Amestica and 32-year-old Wilmer Barzallo.
It's not clear whether the workers died immediately from the impact of the collapse. The medical examiner will determine the cause of death.
Gregory and Amanda Barber live nearby and saw the large emergency response as fire crews spent hours trying to rescue the pair.
"Just absolutely crazy, and [we were] just praying for the construction workers that were trapped underneath, and hoping for the best news, and unfortunately we saw a few hours later that it wasn't the news that we were hoping for," Amanda told WMAR-2 News.
"You never know - they’re just working out here on the front yard and then this happens," Gregory said. " Just unspeakable, and unbelievable. Sad for the families and we saw on the news that it was a young 24-year-old, and that’s around our age. Just sad."
There's now a notice on the door declaring the home unsafe. The Red Cross connected with the homeowners to ensure they had a place to stay temporarily.
On Monday, WMAR-2 News also saw a state inspector from the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health Administration(MOSH), and a truck from the construction crew that employed the two men, Quality 1st Basement Systems, based in Elkton. The company is local dealer for a national brand called All Things Basementy.
To prevent collapses and cave-ins, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires trenches at least 5 feet deep to have a protective system, usually known as a trench box. MOSH will confirm whether there was a trench box in place during the work in Catonsville. The braces that are there now are from the fire department's rescue efforts.
WMAR-2 News spoke to workplace safety expert Vernon O'Donnell, CEO of Voxel, which uses AI to detect safety hazards in a variety of workplaces, including construction sites.
O'Donnell says the AI technology has "the ability to see visual patterns of, there’s a crack where there shouldn’t be, or the angle is off, or in a warehouse environment, the pallets are stacked incorrectly, all right down the middle from a computer vision perspective, that a human eye may not even see or register as they’re kind of just walking by a wall."
O'Donnell said 80% of workplace deaths are preventable. Even if every safety measure is followed to T, we're all human, and it's easy to miss things when you're doing a familiar task.
"So I don't think it's a training issue," he said, speaking of workplace accidents in general. "I don't think it's a thing where people are lacking the competency or the capabilities. I think it's just - you do the same job 1,000 days in a row, and having to have the level of precision and care you do, it can be exhausting."
That's where AI would come in, “to make sure in those moments of lacking care or focus, it’s not waiting until something bad happens and reacting to it, it’s actually being proactive and preventive to stop it from happening," O'Donnell said.