Trevor Kilgore is taking legal action against his ex-employer and contractors over an incident during a house building where a trench caved in, leaving him trapped.
An Iowa man alleges in a lawsuit he was buried under a wall of dirt after an improperly benched, shored, and inadequately protected 12-foot trench collapsed while he was hooking up water and sewer lines at a new home construction site.
In court documents, Trevor Kilgore described the terror in the 12-foot-deep trench on a lot in Bondurant, more than 14 miles northeast of Des Moines, on June 12, 2023. As the trench collapsed, he dove toward the side of the wall and “scrunched” his body up to create an air pocket and avoid crushing his head.
“I looked behind me and that entire wall was coming at me,” he told a Polk County deputy while waiting in an ambulance to be taken to Mercy Hospital. “I tried my best to scrunch, so it didn’t crush my head. It smacked my head against the other wall. And then I just yelled for help.”
One of his co-workers, who operated the excavator when it collapsed and was named a defendant in the lawsuit, told a Polk County deputy what he had communicated with Kilgore after the cave-in.
“Please save me,” he said he heard Kilgore say. “Don’t let me die.”
Along with the excavator operator, the lawsuit names as defendants his former employer, Edwards Enterprises, Inc., its president, secretary, treasurer and registered agent Gregg Edwards and the construction companies contracted to do the work.
In an interview captured by deputies at the site that day, Edwards talked about the dangers: “Is it unsafe? Absof—inglutely. But it’s hard to make it safe. You gotta get a guy in there to make it safe,” according to court documents.
“I’ve never had any of my men get buried. It’s just like anything else, you know. You do it enough, you’re going to get caught,” he allegedly added, according to court documents.
Two days after the collapse, Edwards allegedly told an Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration senior industrial hygienist who investigated this case, “I know I f—ed up, okay,” court documents said.
Local CBS affiliate KCCI, which broke the news of the lawsuit, reported Edwards declined to comment when reached by phone on Monday.
The lawsuit alleges Edwards did not provide Kilgore the required training on relevant federal and state Occupational Safety and Health Administration-mandated safety requirements for trenching and excavation. It alleges Jerry’s Homes did not have an employee visit the job site before the collapse for a walkthrough with Edwards before the excavation work began and did not have a competent person assigned to oversee the work of employees of R and D Plumbing or Edwards on this job site.
The lawsuit said the trench was too narrow for the type of soil at the site.
“It is highly likely that the soil on and around 212 13th Street should have been classified as Type C soil, meaning that the required width for a twelve (12) foot deep trench would have been thirty-nine (39) feet wide at the top,” the document states. “Evidence gathered at the scene of the trench cave-in unequivocally shows that the width of the trench was nowhere close to that requirement.”
He was buried entirely for five minutes — his head was hit hard by falling dirt, the lawsuit said. The construction crew worked to dig him out while emergency crews were called.
After he was dug out, a ladder had to be brought to the scene by a Bondurant firefighter so he could be rescued.
Kilgore was in the hole for about 30 minutes before he was brought up to safety.
“An oxygen tank was given to the patient and applied with a nonrebreather mask,” court documents said.
He had pain in both legs and had bruises on both sides of his face above his ears. An IV line was started and Kilgore was given fluids “for suspected build up of lactic acid from compartment syndrome in the patient’s legs.”
The lawsuit said he suffered from injuries to his head, upper and lower extremities and joints. He has “PTSD Anxiety,” nightmares and “difficulty sleeping as all he sees is dirt,” court documents said.
