Tricky Situation for Excavator in Finland

Last week a 40-tonne class Volvo excavator found itself in a spot of bother on a construction site in Finland, and one of our Finnish readers got in touch to share some of the story with us here on the Digger Man Blog.

Just after 8am last Tuesday on the site of Vallila Park on Kangasalantie, in Helsinki, this Volvo EC380DL actually got that sinking feeling, as the ground slipped away from beneath it, leaving the machine stricken in the hole.

The ground looks to be a very wet type of clay, which probably didn’t help the situation and at first glance it doesn’t actually look to be much of a problem with the machine suffering virtually no damage. One can only assume the operator was unable to slew around to assist in pulling himself out of the collapsed material.

A Liebherr 936 hydraulic excavator which was also working on the site came to assist in the extraction of the Volvo and heavy winching equipment was also used to pull the machine back up onto hard ground.

On this project, main contractor Pohjola Rakennus is constructing a 14-storey tower block in Vallila, which when completed at the end of 2022 will house a total of 70 apartments. 

You can watch a brief video of the start of the rescue mission by clicking on this link. The video is courtesy of MTV UUTISET.