‘Just doing my best’: Hero jumps into collapsing trench to save workers

Jan Botha didn’t think twice about risking his own life to try to save workers trapped in a collapsing trench. He just jumped in.

But he doesn’t think he’s a hero.

“I’m just an ordinary man doing my best,” he said.

And even now, days after the tragedy in Capital Park in Pretoria, in which three workers died, Botha remembers: “I didn’t think about anything else but helping the people stuck in the hole.

“I didn’t even consider my own safety.”

READ: Three workers die after trench collapses on them in Tshwane

It still bothers him that he and other rescuers didn’t manage to save all the workers, who had been there for weeks trying to fix an ongoing sewage problem.

“Yes, I saved a person’s life and could not save the others, but I try not to get emotionally involved because it will break you,” he said.

Botha, 29, a member of the Capital Park Community Policing Forum (CPF) told how, as he arrived home on Friday afternoon, he saw a message on one of the community WhatsApp groups that someone had fallen into a hole close by.

“When I arrived at the house, I quickly realised it wasn’t just someone and it wasn’t just a hole… I just jumped in to help without thinking about it twice,” he said.

Botha said he dug in the soil to try and free one of the workers who was stuck in the ground. While he was inside the trench, the ground kept on collapsing and falling on them.

“We were in the sludge kneedeed trying to free them. It happened so fast,” he said.

Botha said when he jumped into the trench, he could only see two contract workers and didn’t know how many there were in total.

“When we freed the first guy, I saw the second worker. “We managed to dig out half of his body and I felt if he had a pulse. “I don’t what happened, but he didn’t make it,” he said.

The City of Tshwane Emergency Management Services arrived at the scene and took over. Botha said he didn’t see the third or fourth worker at all.

But the worker they freed from the collapsing ground wall climbed back into the trench and held the other worker in his arms while crying, Botha said.

“We had to take him out again.” Botha, who works at Onderstepoort biological products, said it was important to be part of the local CPF because every person plays a role, even those who operate the radios and share the messages.

“I reacted to a message I saw in a group, so everyone played their part,” Botha said.

At the scene of the deaths yesterday, there was still a rancid smell from the stream of sewage running in the yard behind the house where the three contract workers died.

The residents living in the house where the contractors died in their backyard did not want to be named in the media but let The Citizen into the yard to look at the trench.

Metres away from their back door, a section of the yard was blocked off with plastic tape around the killer trench that was now a few metres wide and at least six metres deep.

One of the neighbours, who agreed to speak anonymously, said she was traumatised by the incident. She said the sewage in the area was so bad that when one of the pipes was blocked, it pushed up in the bathtubs.

“For six weeks I watched them work and I even took them coffee – and now they are dead.” The resident said she can’t stop thinking about that one contractor sobbing.

“Those men stood there and cried. I felt so sorry for them, they tried to sort out our problem and then this happened,” another resident said.

“I swear we heard what sounded like their last cries for help.

“And then later we saw their bodies…” the resident said.

Some of the residents said they warned the contractors about the clay ground. Then it collapsed – “and now three people are dead”.

Neighbours down the street said they had been living with the sewage problems for more than nine months.

The sewage was spilling into the Apies River running past the area.

“It’s a sh*tshow, pardon my language,” the resident said.