‘Her spirit is so strong’: Woman survives being buried alive

WESTFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/Gray News) - A woman in Massachusetts survived the unimaginable after she was buried alive at a local construction site.

After beating the odds, Ashley Piccirilli is now thriving.

“If I knew I could’ve died in that hole, would I have panicked? Maybe,” she said. “I literally didn’t think I could die.”

Piccirilli’s chance of surviving after she was buried alive while working at a Northampton construction site was less than 2%.

“It was a gorgeous day. We had just eaten lunch,” Piccirilli said. “I was down in the trench, no supports, no shoring. I had no idea. It was just another day.”

However, what started off as an ordinary day just a week into her new construction job turned into a fight for survival.

“There was a gentleman in the excavator from up top who noticed the wall collapsing,” Piccirilli said. “He yelled, ‘Watch out!’”

At that moment, Piccirilli’s life was about to change.

One of the trench’s side walls came crashing in, trapping her under thousands of pounds of dirt.

“At first, it only really felt like when a friend comes and meets you and gives you that bear hug and it’s kind of uncomfortable and you don’t really like it and really that’s all it felt like,” Piccirilli said.

Although her world was quite literally caving in, the Air Force veteran’s first thought wasn’t of panic.

“They know where I am. They’re coming to get me, so I stayed calm through the whole thing … took very, very small breaths,” Piccirilli said. “I couldn’t take a big breath because there was no room for my lungs to expand because that dirt was packed in.”

Her fellow crewmates and first responders fortunately did not give up on her and continued to work to free her.

“They fought hard to get me out. They knew more than I did about the situation I was in,” Piccirilli said.

It took about 30 minutes for Piccirilli to be uncovered, but the rescue mission was nowhere near being over by then.

“Little did I know, I broke all the ribs on my right side and I think on my left. My lung collapsed, internal bleeding,” Piccirilli said.

She was rushed to Baystate Medical Center where a team of doctors was waiting.

“I don’t remember arriving there, but I do remember being wheeled right into the O.R. I saw a few fuzzy things and I remember people running around and I remember, who I now know as Dr. Kramer, saying, ‘We’re going to take care of you. You’re going to be alright,’” Piccirilli said.

Baystate Medical Center trauma surgeon Dr. Kristina Kramer said Piccirilli was bleeding to death when she arrived.

“It became very clear she needed surgery right away,” she said.

Piccirilli’s prognosis was grim.

“She was bleeding so much that when we found the place [where] she was bleeding from, we could actually hear it. It’s called ‘audible bleeding,’” Kramer said. “That’s when we called for extra help.”

Kramer said Piccirilli’s heart stopped during surgery and had to be restarted.

After the initial surgery, Piccirilli received another surgery the next day, spending the following 30 days at the hospital.

“It’s rare everything goes as smoothly as it did,” Kramer said.

Kramer said it was partly Piccirilli’s fighter spirit that things went as well as they did.

“Her spirit is so strong. As soon as we extubated her, there was a smile on her face and she was always so grateful for the care she had received,” she said.

Piccirilli said she had a lot to fight for.

“My main focus was getting back to flight school … I wanted to prove people wrong, that I could do it still,” she said. “That even though I went through this, I can still get myself through there.”

Her family also kept her strong in some of her toughest moments.

“My nieces and nephews, and I have a gazillion of them, they were my motivating factor as well,” she said. “I remember missing birthdays when I was in the hospital and they actually postponed my nephew’s birthday for when I got out. This is what I’m here for.”

Now, the sky’s the limit for Piccirilli.

“I went to flight school almost a year later, I think it was a year and a month from the accident,” Piccirilli said.

After more than a year of training, Piccirilli is flying high as a pilot at Barnes Air National Guard Base. She doesn’t think about the day of her accident very often. Instead, she thinks about the people who saved her life to get her through the hard days.

“If it doesn’t strengthen your faith, in whatever you believe in, I don’t know what can,” she said. Taking every day as it is and not getting angry at the little things … I don’t have road rage as much anymore. Little things change.”

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