More than 30 people reached safety with the help of rescuers after a tunnel under construction collapsed in Wilmington on Wednesday night.

The 31 people, all presumed to be workers, were removed and received medical assessments, but none had visible injuries, said Brian Humphrey, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

More than 100 firefighters responded around 8 p.m. near Figueroa Street and Lomita Boulevard, including members of the urban search and rescue team. By 9:15 p.m., all missing persons were removed, Humphrey said. The workplace site is east of the 110 Freeway and north of Pacific Coast Highway.

The tunnel, which measures 18 feet in diameter, is the $630 million Clearwater Tunneling Project and is being constructed to move wastewater from Carson to San Pedro.  It collapsed about five to six miles south of the tunnel’s only access point, Humphrey said.

Investigators believe some of the trapped workers pushed over a pile of loose soil between 12 feet and 15 feet tall to meet some of their co-workers on the other side and be shuttled several at a time to the access point on the surface.

TV news helicopter videos showed workers being brought out of the tunnel in a cage hoisted up by a crane.

Before workers started escaping the tunnel collapse, worried family members gathered nearby.

Maria Orozco arrived to the corner of West Q Street and Figueroa Street with her hands against her chest. Following behind was her daughter’s family from Los Angeles.

Orozco has three sons who were working on the project that collapsed.

“I’m waiting for my sons,” she said in Spanish. “I need to know for sure if they’re safe, I have three sons working here and they’re not answering their phones.”

“I was at church and today it was my daughter’s turn to pray and I asked her to pray for my sons,” she said. “I think in that moment was when they were facing this problem. During church, I don’t have my phone on but once I checked it I saw I had many missed calls. Then my daughter let me know that something was wrong. I really felt it in my heart that something happened, that’s when she let me know that the tunnel had collapsed.”

“The truth is I’m feeling a lot of sadness at the moment because I’m yet to know how they’re doing,” she said.

Later, she said, “One of my sons called me to let me know that they had gotten out.”

The three sons live in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Signal Hill and all have families of their own, she said. She has twins who are 35 and the youngest son who is 30.

“They have their own children as well who were worried,” Orozco said. “I want to see them, I want to see them.”

LAFD Interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva reassured Orozco that all the workers were fine and were being seen by paramedics. She thought that her youngest son wasn’t doing well, but  Villanueva said that no workers had been severely injured.

“Don’t worry,” he told Orozco, “I saw all of them and it looks like they’re all fine.”

This helped the mother let out a sigh of relief.

Workers were trapped for about an hour and the water was up to their mid-thigh, Villanueva said.

Authorities said OSHA will investigate the collapse, which is standard with workplace accidents.

“We don’t have any information about the nature of the collapse yet,” said Michael Chee, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.

“What I just got a report on is that 31 crew members were down in the tunnel. They have all been extricated safely. There are no significant or major injuries that I know of,” Chee said. “We understand that our crew that was working down in the tunnel boring machine, which is approximately five miles heading towards the coast from this point, and it was designed to build the tunnel about seven miles long before it reached the coast.”

Mayor Karen Bass said she talked to workers and said they were relieved and had been calling their families.

The collapse was expected to delay completion of the tunnel project. The contractor for the tunnel is Dragados USA Inc.. a tunnel-boring machine specialty company.

Planning for the tunneling project began as early as 2006. The aim was to replace two aging underground wastewater pipes, which were installed in 1937 and 1958. The project was officially approved in 2021 and was expected to take approximately three to four years to be completed.

Staff writer Mona Darwish contributed to this story.