This is the terrifying moment that a man was blasted out of a manhole by a steam explosion in the US.

The vision, which was released by Santa Clara County officials on Tuesday, was captured at the Valley Medical Centre earthquake retrofit project in San Jose last year.

In the video, workers gather around a concrete vault with steam lines running into it at the site of a new VMC facility.

“I wouldn’t want to be in that vault right now…you couldn’t pay me enough to do that,” a man can be heard saying as a loud banging sound is heard in the line.





“Maybe you should step out for a minute,” he then shouts to the man named Joel, who is down in the manhole.

Then just as Joel is climbing up the ladder to leave the manhole, the steam explosion occurs.

As hot steam pours out onto the site, men rush to Joel’s aid and drag him to safety.

Incredibly, Joel managed to walk away from the incident uninjured.

County officials have accused San Jose contractor Turner Construction of breaching its contract with safety lapses and delays in its $300 million VMC earthquake retrofit and expansion project, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

They released the video along with a series of communications, which they say shows Turner failed to offer a satisfactory account of the steam explosion, which could have been fatal.

The county's director of facilities Jeff Draper told the newspaper that experienced or properly trained workers would have know to get out straight away when they heard the steam pipes banging.

"These were very loud pops and crackles," Draper said. "Workers should have evacuated immediately and shut the system down."

He noted it was incredible that the man escaped unharmed.

"If he'd still been in the vault, there would have been blunt trauma when the flex connection blew and sent shrapnel throughout the vault," Draper said.

“The hot steam would have burned him. He would have had serious injuries or worse."

National news break – September 2