MA Woman Buried Alive Under Thousands Of Pounds Of Dirt Shares Story

WESTFIELD, MA — A Massachusetts woman is lucky to be alive after she was buried alive in a 13-foot-deep trench just a week into her new job at a construction site.

Ashley Piccirlli, who is now a Barnes Air National Guard Base pilot, shared her story for May's Trauma Awareness Month with Baystate Health, which she credits for saving her life.

The accident occurred in August 2021, when Piccirlli, then 32 years old, was packing gravel around a sewer pipe when suddenly the wall caved, when thousands of pounds of dirt buried her under six feet of soil.

"I took shallow breaths and stayed calm," Piccirlli told Baystate Health. "I knew they would dig me out, so I just waited."

Thirty minutes later, after rescuers dug with an excavator and then their hands, Piccirlli was pulled from the earth where an ambulance crew from Northampton Fire Rescue worked to stabilize her. The team then transported her 20 minutes away to Springfield, the home of the region's only level one trauma center at Baystate Medical Center.

Piccirlli had serious crush injuries that resulted in a collapsed lung, 10 broken ribs including all the ribs on her left side, a broken left clavicle, a ruptured spleen, and severe internal bleeding as her vena cava, one of the largest veins that carries blood to the heart from other areas of the body, was badly injured. At one point, her heart stopped.

"We were keeping her alive second by second," trauma nurse Caitlin Millett said. "I couldn’t believe she had vitals. It was all-hands-on-deck."

Later, when Baystate Health social workers were able to identify Piccirlli, Millet realized she knew her patient as her fitness trainer from about a decade before.

"I didn't recognize her with her injuries," Millet sad.

For the first week after the accident, Piccirlli received critical care in the ICU. She then spent three weeks further recovering from her injuries in the Intermediate Care Unit.

Ten months after she was discharged from the hospital, Piccirlli climbed Mount Washington. A year after her accident, she passed the Army Physical Fitness Test in order to return to flight school. Today, she's a U.S. Army warrant officer with the Massachusetts National Guard.

"The reason she survived is because of her strength physically and mentally and the teamwork of all the different people that were involved in her care – it’s never one person," Dr. Kristina Kramer, one of the first doctors who saw Piccirlli, said.

Piccirlli added that she now appreciates the little things in life more than ever.

"I'm never going to be what I was before, but I'm a different me – I'm a different kind of strong," she said.

Read the full story at Baystate Health.