One of two people who were trapped in a 15-foot trench in Pacific Palisades has died. The second worker in the construction project incident was rescued after an effort that lasted more than an hour after firefighters arrived on the scene.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the victims were working for a subcontractor on a storm-water treatment project at 200 Temescal Canyon Road and were excavating the trench, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The worker who was pulled alive from the trench was rushed by ambulance to the nearby beach, where he was met by a helicopter and airlifted to UCLA Medical Center. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office identified the dead man as 50 year old Gilbert Vargas. Emergency workers recovered his body after about nine hours of digging in the 200 block of North Temescal Canyon Road, just north of Pacific Coast Highway. Vargas and the unidentified injured man had been excavating with back hoes on a city storm water project.

Peter Melton, a spokesman for Cal-OSHA, said the agency has ordered work stopped at the site until any hazards have been resolved.

The state Division of Occupational Safety and Health has six months to complete its investigation, but Melton said Los Angeles Engineering Inc., the men’s employer, “is going to want to get this taken care of as soon as possible to get back to work, if they can get back to work.”