Construction worker trapped in Minneapolis trench makes full recovery

For Ben Henga, Mon­day's ac­ci­dent at a down­town Min­ne­ap­olis con­struc­tion site could have been so much worse.

For three hours, he was trapped in a trench with sand up to his knees af­ter a wall col­lapsed. One of his legs was caught in the shor­ing that also gave way and his foot was caught in the build­ing's foot­ings. The site was so un­sta­ble that res­cue crews could not use hy­drau­lic e­quip­ment to get him out and in­stead used shov­els to dig him out by hand.

Henga sur­vived vir­tu­al­ly un­scathed.

"He's our mira­cle man," his moth­er, Shar­on, said on Fri­day. "Ev­er­y­thing trag­ic that could have hap­pened, didn't hap­pen. He had a guard­i­an an­gel watch­ing over him."

An an­gel may­be, but def­i­nite­ly par­a­medics and doc­tors from Hennepin County Medical Center who were by his side the en­tire time. So were 16 mem­bers of the tech­ni­cal res­cue teams from the Min­ne­ap­olis and St. Paul fire de­part­ments who pulled him to safe­ty.

A few smiles and sighs of re­lief went up when Ben Henga was lift­ed out of the hole in a stretch­er bas­ket. He was talk­ing and a­lert, and gave a thumbs up when he was load­ed into an am­bu­lance, auth­ori­ties said Mon­day.

"We are grate­ful to the res­cue work­ers," Shar­on Henga said.

Henga, 21, was treat­ed at HCMC and re­leased. He suf­fered no se­ri­ous in­ju­ries. Not even a bro­ken bone, a fact his moth­er at­trib­ut­ed to the 4 gal­lons of milk he drinks each week.

Ben Henga was sub­con­trac­tor for Kraus-Anderson. He re­mov­ing some re­tain­ing wall boards at the be­low-ground site where a 17-sto­ry, 204-unit mixed-use build­ing is going up at the cor­ner of Wash­ing­ton and Park ave­nues when the ac­ci­dent hap­pened.

Since 2015, work­ers trapped in trench­es have led to three deaths in Min­ne­so­ta, ac­cord­ing to OSHA. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Min­ne­so­ta em­ploy­ers are cited an av­er­age of 35 times a year for not pro­vid­ing em­ploy­ees work­ing in an ex­ca­va­tion site with an ad­e­quate pro­tec­tive sys­tem, OSHA said. The ac­ci­dent is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.