An unimaginable tragedy struck in a small community of a few dozen homes on Long Key Road in the Florida Keys Monday morning, when three workers from a private contractor tasked with fixing a roadway climbed into a hole in the ground and, ultimately, to their deaths.
By the time a Key Largo firefighter climbed into the same hole near Lake Surprise in a desperate attempt to save the men, they were dead. And within seconds, the firefighter was also overcome by poisonous gas and was fighting for his life.
The hole, just wide enough to fit a body and about 15 feet deep, was filled with hydrogen sulfide and methane gas created from years of rotted vegetation. It was so poisonous, Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay said, that the firefighter was unconscious within seconds.