Emily Brown
A 32-year-old woman found herself buried alive when a trench at her construction job collapsed on her, but four years on she's credited one aspect of her reaction with helping to save her life.
Ashley Piccirilli had only been at her new job in Northampton, Massachusetts for seven days in 2021 when her world literally turned upside down.
She was working in a trench with co-workers, standing about nine-to-13 feet deep to lay a sewer pipe when the trench suddenly collapsed, and 'everything went quiet'.
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"I’ll never forget the sound because it hit me from the left to the right, the sound of the dirt just kinda like a whoosh over my body," Ashley wrote in an article written for People.
Ashley 'couldn't move an inch'; she remembers the feeling being 'tight and uncomfortable', and was left wondering: "How do I get out?"
Struggling to breath, Ashley was left taking 'really small little breaths' - but while the whole ordeal might sound like a claustrophobic's worst nightmare, Ashley amazingly revealed she managed to remain relatively calm.
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It was this, she believes, that helped her stay alive.
Ashley explained: "I never thought I would die, never, because I was like — they know where I am, they’re gonna come get me. I knew I was buried alive, I don’t know if it was stupidity, but that kept me calm and I didn’t panic. I didn’t think of family or anything because I didn’t think I would die.
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"A lot of people’s worst fear is to get buried alive and it could’ve been mine, but in the moment it was fight or flight. You have to fight to get out, and [my fight] was me staying calm. I have a military background. I attribute staying calm because of my training."
Though Ashley was able to stay calm in the moment, she didn't realize at the time that one of her lungs had collapsed and her ribs were broken.
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Had she been able to take a big breath, she would have realized she was getting a lack of air.
"If I had panicked, I would not be here today. I 100% believe that," she said.
It was only when rescuers came to help Ashley that she began to feel pain, and when she was finally removed from the Earth, she was given a chest tube to help her breathe.
After she was treated, it was revealed that she'd broken all the ribs on her left side, one on her right side, and her clavicle. Her spleen had to be removed, along with 15-20 percent of her liver, and a major artery had a 'huge hole' in it.
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Doctors had to reconstruct Ashley's sternum and diaphragm, and all in all she spent about 30 days in hospital, followed by a year of recovery.
Dr. Kramer, a surgeon who helped treat Ashley, credited part of the reason she recovered so well to her 'positive outlook on life'.