The man versus mud battle finally ended Friday when the second of two excavators was pulled from a squishy Ebey Island bog.
A crew of 22, using several pieces of heavy equipment including two bulldozers and a massive crane, yanked the last excavator out of the mud just north of the U.S. 2 trestle.
Truckers passing along the trestle tapped their horns for good luck.
“It’s been a huge group effort,” said Bruce King, an Ebey Island poultry and bee farmer who has watched the saga unfold since his neighbor got an expensive rented excavator swamped down in April.
The neighbor, Jim Clemetson, 48, who lives in Everett, was attempting to build a driveway to his Ebey Island property, but instead got the rental equipment stuck. The yellow 2006 John Deere 200 fell on its side, filled with sludge and slowly sank for the past three months.
A Grays Harbor contractor, Pacific Reign, paid $38,000 to the rental company for salvaging rights on the equipment. But it got its own excavator stuck in the mud a week ago attempting to pull the first one out of the bog.
Pacific Reign then turned to a Snohomish crane company to pull out both bogged down pieces of heavy equipment.
Ford Crane Inc. pulled the first excavator out Thursday. On Friday, inch by inch, the company pulled the second excavator – which weighs 22 tons – from the hole in the ground.
Workers, with mud up to their knees, shoved muck from the cab of the stuck excavator.
Barb Ford, the wife of crane owner Kerry Ford, took a home video, and a few construction workers snapped photos with their cell phone cameras.
“It’s amazing,” said Dean Moulton, a friend of Kerry Ford, as he observed waves of jiggling earth beneath him. “It’s like playing on a bowl of Jell-O. One mistake and you’re going down.”
Jeff Emery, a partner in the Grays Harbor company that bought salvaging rights to the first excavator, said the job has worn him out.
“I just want to get (the excavator) on the flatbed and get out of here,” he said.
Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.
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