Dion Burleson, Lincoln Emergency Management: Firefighters were on the scene within five minutes of dispatch. Rescuers worked “feverishly” through the night, while they feared the children were already dead.
The bodies of 6-year-old Chloe Jade Arwood and 7-year-old James Levi Caldwell, were dug out Monday morning after an excavation dug to build a bunker collapsed on the children. The two young cousins were apparently playing in the hole. There was no shoring structure to support the pit’s tall dirt walls as required by law. Some concrete was observed on a ledge on top of the hole.
Recent rains apparently softened the walls of the excavation. Jordan Arwood, 31, was operating a backhoe Sunday night in the area when the walls collapsed. He called 9-1-1 to report the cousins were buried, and reported that there was no way they could breathe.
Authorities on Monday recovered the bodies of two children who were buried when a wall of dirt and clay fell on them while they were playing in a hole at a home construction site in Stanley, North Carolina. Rescuers in volved in the below grade technical rescue reported it was difficult to estimate how far down the underground the children were located.
Stanley is a town in Gaston County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 3,556 at the 2010 census
Lincoln County Emergency Management
