Firefighter Rescued After Pit Caves In

Thu., May 23, 1996

Adam Lynn Staff Writer

Jay Holder of all people knows the danger of climbing into deep, unstable holes.

Holder, 39, is a Spokane firefighter who once was assigned to a team that rescues people trapped in cave-ins.

On Wednesday, though, Holder found himself trapped in an 11-foot-deep pit. He was helping a friend install a sewer line when one of the walls fell in on him.

“I should have known better,” he said after Valley firefighters freed him nearly 40 minutes later, embarrassed but unhurt.

The ordeal began about 2:30 p.m. outside a duplex near 16th and Herald in the Spokane Valley.

Holder and Mark Roecks, who owns the duplex, were working to connect the small blue building to the county sewer line.

They used a backhoe to dig down to the trunk line, then switched to shoveling by hand because the backhoe wouldn’t reach deep enough.

Holder was in the hole when the west wall collapsed, burying him waist-high in wet, sandy dirt. “It filled my pockets up,” he said.

He couldn’t move in the morass, and Roecks went for help.

Minutes later, Valley fire crews and sheriff’s deputies surrounded the hole.

Firefighters used pieces of plywood and backboards made for carrying accident victims to build a box around Holder to prevent more dirt from falling on him.

Finally, fire crews improvised a crane by attaching a strap to the end of a hydraulic ladder on one of their trucks. They swung the ladder over the hole and lowered the strap to Holder. He grabbed on and they slowly pulled him free by lifting the ladder skyward.

Holder brushed off his pants, kissed his wife Sharon, and thanked the firefighters.

He isn’t looking forward to his next day at work.

“I’m going to hear about this for the rest of my life,” said the father of two.

Assistant Valley Fire Chief Karl Bold said Holder was lucky.

“That whole bank could’ve come down, and it would have been up over his waist or his chest,” Bold said. “Then we would have had a real emergency.”

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