Man buried alive when sand and mud engulf excavator cab

Summary: A worker was buried alive when a wall of sand and mud collapsed and engulfed him in the cab of the excavator he was operating.

The incident: When Alondra de Leon and her daughter Sofia said goodbye to Alan Herrarte as he was leaving for work one day, they had no idea it would be the last time they’d see their husband and father alive.

Herrarte, 25, an employee of Stout Excavating Group, San Antonio, had been working for more than two years at the Signal Peak Silica mine near Poteet, TX.

Herrarte’s primary job duty was to operate a John Deere Model 870 excavator at the bottom of a sand pit that was about 90 feet deep.

As Herrarte was running the excavator, he didn’t notice that the sand in the pit had become unstable due to recent rainfall.

Without warning, the sand pit collapsed. A wall of sand and mud enveloped the excavator cab in which Herrarte was sitting. The cab was filled with sand before Herrarte could get out.

The response: de Leon learned of the mine collapse while she was browsing social media. She and her mother-in-law raced to the worksite.

It took responders more than 20 hours to remove Herrarte’s lifeless body from the excavator cab. He was declared dead at the scene.

The aftermath: “This was not in our plans,” wrote de Leon after the death of her husband. “But I thank God for the time he gave me with you. I thank you for having left me the most beautiful gift in the world and the most beautiful memory of you – our little girl.

“You will always be present with us and in our hearts,” continued de Leon, “and I will make sure to always talk to Sofia about you so that she remembers the great father she had and that he loved her very much.”

(From the May 19, 2025, issue of Safety Alert for Supervisors. To start your no-obligation trial subscription to the publication right now, please click here.)