ORLANDO, Fla. --
A backhoe operator was rescued on Friday after being trapped under a mound of dirt weighing 18 to 20 tons, officials said.
It happened around 10:30 a.m. at a Winter Garden construction company off Avalon Road.
Authorities said it took more than one hour of digging to free the worker. Video from Chopper 2 showed the victim being loaded into a helicopter to be transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center. Rescuers apparently didn't need to perform CPR.
"Cardiac and pulmonary-wise, breathing and heart, seem to be OK, so that means the next thing you worry about is having all that weight on his extremities. If he had that weight, he might have been protected by the (backhoe) or he might have had all that weight on his extremities," WESH 2 News medical expert Dr. Todd Husty said.
Orange and Lake County firefighters responded to Double D Crushers, named after the owner's first grandchildren according to the company's MySpace page. They removed the trapped backhoe with a similar front-end loader.
Fire rescue workers then surrounded the crushed backhoe and extracted the operator.
Stay with WESH 2 News and WESH.com for further details.
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