Calf. Woman Plucked from Chicken Waste Pit

A security guard on her rounds early Tuesday at a Petaluma chicken processing plant fell into a pit of chicken waste, unable to touch bottom and starting to sink as firefighters arrived, reached in and pulled her to safety.

The woman had been able to dial 911 on her cell phone while precariously hanging on to the edge of the pit with one hand, launching a quick and unusual rescue.

“She was swimming in this nastiness, fully clothed and sinking, holding on to the edge,” Petaluma fire Battalion Chief Jeff Schach said. “She was fine, other than cold” and coated up to her neck in rendered chicken remnants.

The woman, who only was identified as a private security guard, had called for help at 7:15 a.m. saying she was in a pit toward the back of the property of the Petaluma Poultry Processing plant on Lakeville Highway. She was out of the muck about 10 minutes later.

“Apparently she had yelled and yelled and no one could hear her. She was able to hold on with one hand and dial out with the other,” said Redcom dispatch supervisor Ron Marsh, who took the call.

Marsh said while on the phone, the woman had been “doing really well,” for her predicament and was able to give a good description of where she was. “She wasn’t injured, she couldn’t get out. She was stuck in this pit area,” Marsh said.

But the woman also told Marsh she couldn’t touch the bottom and feared she was sinking. “...she was starting to lose her grip on whatever she had a hold of,” Marsh said. “That’s when I told her to put the phone down and hold on with both hands.”

“Thankfully they found her really quickly,” he said.

Firefighters rushing to the plant were alerted they were heading toward a person stuck in a pit, possibly full of chicken waste and fecal matter, and they began thinking about a rescue involving a person in a confined space.

It turned out to require no special equipment other than strength. “By the time our crews found her, they just reached in and pulled her out,” Schach said.

The woman told her rescuers she’d been on her security rounds when she found an off-kilter grate covering a ground-level waste pit.

“She was trying to put it back on, fell into the pit and the grate came in with her,” Schach said.

The fall landed her in a holding tank about six-feet-deep by about six-feet-wide. The level of the waste was about two feet from the top of the pit, making it difficult to keep hold.

A call to management at the Petaluma Poultry Processing plant wasn’t immediately returned.

A Petaluma fire ambulance crew took her to a hospital for a check for injuries or issues. State officials with Cal-Osha, who handle work-related accidents, were notified.

Schach said the call was a first for Petaluma firefighters. He said the situation could have had a different ending if she hadn’t been able to use her phone. She’d been alone when she fell. “There were not a lot of people around,” Schach said. “She is lucky.”

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or [email protected] or Twitter@rossmannreport.

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