TWO enormous cranes hoisted this 20-tonne excavator high into the sky.

The giant machine swung gently in the breeze as it dangled over the rooftops of awe-struck residents in Stutton Road, Tadcaster.

Only 24 hours earlier, the same excavator had toppled into a 35ft deep hole and landed upside down.

The Evening Press reported that a driver operating a small digger at the bottom of the hole at the time managed to escape without a scratch.

Described by firefighters who attended the accident as "the luckiest man alive", the worker was spared because the mechanical arm of the excavator landed first, propping the rest of the machine against the hole's concrete-lined wall. Had the arm given way, his digger would have been crushed.

The excavator had been lowering a skip to the bottom of the hole when it tipped over the edge and tumbled down. The excavator driver was taken to York Hospital suffering from head injuries, which are not thought to be serious.

Sub contractors Duffy, working on an £800,000 sewer replacement scheme for Yorkshire Water, called in a crane hire firm to recover the machine on Saturday. In a complex operation, starting at 8am and lasting more than nine hours, a 500-tonne Liebherr LTM1500 crane hoisted the excavator out of the hole, while a smaller 400-tonne Demag AC400 crane flipped it the right way up and deposited it back on to solid ground.

A Yorkshire Water spokesman told the Evening Press the company would co-operate fully with the ongoing investigation into the incident.

Updated: 10:50 Monday, March 14, 2005