The New Subway

Underground tunnels have been a major feature of New York City for nearly 200 years. Currently a movement is in action to restore and make into a museum an old Long Island rail tunnel in Brooklyn that even includes a long-abandoned station—all accessible only through a manhole in the middle of a Brooklyn street. Also under construction and hopefully near completion is Water Tunnel 3, a vast line tapping into the Croton Reservoirs in Westchester County. Want a glass of ice water in New York? Just ask for a “Croton Cocktail.” The work on Tunnel 3 began in 1970, and to date 23 workers have been killed during its construction.

That seemed to be the fate of Joseph Barone, age 27, an excavator (then called “sandhogs”) on March 19, 2013, according to Paul Hashagen, a retired fireman and now contributing editor to Firehouse (Cygnus Business Media, Inc) in the June, 2013, issue. His article, “Mud, Sweat & Cheers,” explains that Barone was working on a new subway tunnel, started in 1929 but still under construction underneath Manhattan Island's Second Avenue. The current work site is around 95th street, for those familiar with Manhattan. While working one evening Barone, a member of the excavator's union, was walking on a wooden plank set over the mud shortly after 8 pm when his pants leg caught on part of a machine being used in the excavation, and he slipped into the mud.

That particular type of mud is called “bull's liver,” and is somewhat similar to quicksand. Hashagen describes it as mud or clay that “is not very common and is difficult to identify without specialized training or experience—and is not clay at all. It is defined as inorganic silt of slight plasticity that quakes like jelly from vibration. Bull's liver is a highly unusual soil, with unconventional engineering behaviors. It apparently received its name from New York city construction workers known as 'sandhogs' who, while digging tunnels at the turn of the 20th century, leaned against seemingly solid tunnel walls only to have them liquefy from their body weight. Also known as 'rock flour,' bull's liver consists predominantly of silt-size particles, but has little or no plasticity [the ability to be molded].” It can flow like a liquid, and extraction from it is nearly impossible.

Doing the Impossible

However, dealing with the impossible is what the SOC does daily. As Barone began to sink into the muck and yelled for help co-workers fastened a rope around him, but were unable to pull him free from the sucking bull's liver. They tried using heavy equipment to dig a trench around Barone to free him. Alas, that did not work. At 8:33 p.m. the NYFD was notified, and responded with two fire engines, two ladder trucks, Rescue 1, two squad companies and the hazardous material unit, Battalion 10 and the Special Operations Battalion—about 150 firemen total. Was this overkill? Not hardly. Barone was still sinking deeper into the silt. Remember, all this was taking place 75 feet beneath Second Avenue, and the responders had to enter the site by way of the access at East 95th Street.

“The first-due truck, Ladder 43, sized up the situation and quickly took a basic, but vital action,” Hashagen explains. “The firefighters made their way to the trapped man, [on the same narrow planking] attached a life-saving rope to him and slung it up and over a high point to prevent his sinking any further into the mud.”

Hashagan describes this rope as a special 150-foot long, 15/16-inch nylon 707 continuous filament in a three-strand, left-lay configuration that weighs ten pounds but can hold up to nine thousand pounds before breaking.

A few moments later, Rescue 1 arrived and was directed to the tunnel's entrance. After an hour of “messy, dogged work, it was determined that the man's leg was also pinned underneath sheets of plywood, now covered by the wet mud. The mud caused a tremendous suction effect on these submerged sheets of wood and their removal would prove to be both difficult and time consuming.” Additional equipment, including “36-volt Sawzalls” was brought in for an attempt to saw the soggy plywood apart, but the muck clogged the blades. Hooks were attached to the edges of the plywood to pull it out, but the wood broke into pieces. Finally, the plywood had to be extracted in small pieces.

Pumps were placed to try to draw out the slimy slurry-like mud, but the process was slow and inefficient. A paramedic examined Barone, who was conscious and “actually in remarkable condition, except for the cold.” It was, after all, March in New York City, with no signs of spring except rain and remnants of Hurricane Sandy the previous October. “The paramedic was able to run an IV and after the worker's torso was completely cleared, warm blankets were applied to stabilize his temperature.” The paramedic and Barone discussed football (keeping him calm) while other firemen worked to extract him. An EMS physician also examined Barone, monitoring his vital statistics.

Work From Above

“On the street above,” Hashagen continues, “three rescue companies and three squad companies had joined in the effort, along with several other specialized units. The SOC Air compressor Unit was positioned and supplied the correct pressure to the SOC air knife. Three sump pumps were in operation. The Con Edison vacuum truck was positioned and despite the great distance was able to remove some of the mud and water. The first grip hoist became clogged with mud and was placed out of service. A second grip hoist was repositioned with a better directional pull and operation continued. Various SOC members rotated in and out of the digging positions, trying to keep fresh hands at work.” Heavy equipment was used at the rescuers' direction to dig a trench adjacent to Barone. After three hours of “trial and error,” the rescuers began to make progress.

By this time, the activity had attracted the media and news cameras were everywhere, along with neighbors and sightseers. Four hours after the event began Barone was lifted out of the trench in a construction basket and rolled to an awaiting ambulance, while the crowd cheered. A few days later SOC returned to confer with the construction company representatives and engineers regarding future operations in the bull's liver, and sample of it were taken for training purposes at the FDNY Technical Rescue School on Randall's Island.

Lessons in Loss Control Management

Trench collapse is a common construction-site accident, and is usually due to failure to properly shore up the sides of the trench in potentially loose soil. When serious injury or a fatality occurs, OSHA investigates and fines usually result. Whether OSHA investigated this accident is not reported, but the situation was unique, and the efforts of the FDNY's SOC were heroic.

In risk management both pre-and post-loss control are as important as any risk financing process, which often gets the major attention of the insurance press. But loss control must take situations such as the Second Avenue Subway Tunnel accident as an opportunity to look for methods of prevention of future similar losses. Considering that this subway line was started in 1929 and is still under construction indicates that equipment and processes have undoubtedly changed greatly in the 80-plus years since the project began. Review of those changes may help in preventing future loss.

Tunnel construction has always been hazardous. Despite the invention of large tunnel drilling machinery, as Hashagen reported, 23 workers died in the Water Tunnel 3 dig. The subway is a “dig and cover” project, where the street is opened and the tunnel prepared beneath it, as were many, if not most, of theNew Yorksubway tunnels. Massive tunnel boring machines are useful in rock (as opposed to drilling and blasting) but are ineffective in sloppy soil such as “bull's liver.”

Trench accidents are bound to continue, and there's bound to be an increase in the number of such accidents as the economy improves and more construction projects begin. The adjuster faced with a tunnel-collapse claim—usually under a workers' compensation policy but occasionally as a general liability claim—needs to review each step of how the trench was being constructed, what type of soil was involved, what precautions against collapses were taken, and what steps toward employee or by-passer rescue occurred.

Many such accidents happen in areas that may be served only by volunteer fire departments or suburban units that may not have the same skills and training—and equipment—available to the NYFD SOC. That stuff is expensive, but when a loss occurs, may become quite necessary if a life is to be saved.

The role of an adjuster should not be just “claims resolution.” A claim is simply a financial transaction under a contract or at law; adjusting should consider the loss, a process that begins, like the one in New York, with hazards and builds until the peril occurs and damage begins. That damage continues until it is controlled. By analyzing situations as loss, and not simply as a claim, the information produced by the adjuster's investigation and evaluation can assist in the prevention of similar losses in the future. That is the true risk science approach to our profession of adjusting.