Two men are lucky to be alive after this week’s collapse of a workover unit at an oil well site in Long Beach, California.
While news accounts described it as an “oil derrick” that collapsed, the picture shows it was more of a pulling unit. The unit collapsed without warning while one of the two workers was in a cage 50 feet in the air.
The rig collapsed onto an existing pump. Firefighters had to free the man from the crushed rig and he initially was in critical condition in a local hospital.
An investigation is underway to determine what caused the collapse of the rig.