Sunday, February 07, 1999
Trench cave-in survivor faces long rehab
BY MICHAEL D. CLARK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Lying on his stomach in the muddy bottom of a 13-foot trench staring into a sewer pipe was not an odd thing for Jim Bagwell to do.
The self-employed handyman has a reputation in his Price Hill community of generously helping neighbors with landscaping and plumbing repairs.
On the Saturday morning of Jan. 30 he was doing a favor for a Green Township friend and had used a rented backhoe to dig a deep trench.
Rising to his knees, he glanced to his right and his eyes widened with alarm.
A crack was ripping open the trench's earthen wall and releasing thousands of pounds of dirt down on him.
“I saw it coming, but there was no way I could have stood up fast enough to get out,” Mr. Bagwell told The Cincinnati Enquirer from his University Hospital bed in his first interview since being buried alive for six hours.
Mr. Bagwell fought the avalanche and moved his head underneath the shovel of the backhoe in desperate attempt to assure breathing room.
Caught in a semi-fetal position, the dirt pressed his chest and he struggled to breathe. He said he thought “I didn't know if I'd come out of that hole alive or dead. But there was no sense in panicking.”
“I try not to get upset over anything because it always makes things worse,” he said. “It happened so fast. It started to press tighter and tighter on me.
“I was barely able to breathe. I could only take shallow breaths. I thought "Lord I'm not going to ask
you to do anything because if it's my time ... but if you don't want me now please don't let me go,'” the 41-year-old Mr. Bagwell said with tears welling in his eyes.
Above him, on the rim of the trench, neighbor Dave Muenchen watched in horror.
“I shouted "Jim, get out of there!' but it was too late,” recalled Mr. Muenchen.
Emergency rescue veterans say trench collapses are usually more about body recovery than rescue. The fallen soil almost immediately chokes off oxygen.
But Mr. Bagwell was smart and lucky.
The shovel of the backhoe was over his head and the earth that tried to bury him stopped at his chest.
But perhaps more importantly, said Mr. Muenchen, Mr. Bagwell was typically unflappable.
“All he said was "call 911, call 911' in a calm voice. It was amazing. There wasn't any panic in his voice at all,” Mr. Muenchen said.
Mr. Muenchen's wife, Deborah, said that has always been Mr. Bagwell's personality.
“Everyone was standing around all hysterical and here he was calm in the middle of us,” she said recalling the dozens of emergency workers and neighbors who gathered to help, watch and pray.
“It amazes me, but knowing him for seven years that's just the way he is. Never once could you tell he was scared,” she said.
But Mr. Bagwell now confesses he was little else.
“I worried about losing everything I had,” he said, referring to his life and health, which he depends on for his income as a truck driver, asphalt roller and handyman.
As the hours passed, the numbing pressure and cold increased. Water pooled around his legs and waist. The soil was about 56 degrees and emergency workers scrambled to find a heated fan that could blow warm air into the trench so Mr. Bagwell would not succumb to hyperthermia.
It was that same pressure and low temperature that helped his lower body withstand the six-hour burial. But later he would pay a painful price.
Muscle tissue in his legs died or was severely damaged. Deadly toxins accumulated in his lower body and would later threaten his kidneys.
“He looked really good coming out of the ditch but his muscles were compressed,” said University Hospital trauma surgeon Dr. Jay Johannigman. “They often come out looking like a rose when you pull them out but they are significantly ill.
“There was so much pressure ... essentially his muscles weren't getting any blood flow for six hours. When the blood finally gets there the dead or dying muscles release toxins ... and the muscles swell up quickly,” Dr. Johannigman explained.
So swollen that Mr. Bagwell spent the week going through three operations to cut open the skin on his legs and buttocks to allow the now blood-gorged muscles to fully expand..
His kidneys are improving and Mr. Bagwell is in good condition, though he is facing two to four months of rehabilitation, said Dr. Johannigman.
Glenda Bagwell joked that her husband of seven years “used to have tiny bird legs, but not anymore.”
“He won't say it, but I know it's been really hard on him,” Mrs. Bagwell said.
Saturday Mr. Bagwell was visited in the hospital by members of the Green Township rescue squad and the Hamilton County Urban Search and Rescue Task Force.
“If it wasn't for them I'd still be in that hole,” Mr. Bagwell said thanking them repeatedly.
Medical bills are the Bagwells' new challenge. Self-employed, Mr. Bagwell said he has been unable to afford health insurance and is facing a long rehabilitation beginning this week when he moves to the Drake Center.
Friends have set up a Friends of Jim Bagwell Donation Fund at Star Bank to help with medical costs. Donations may be made at any branch.
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