City crews late yesterday afternoon finally pulled a city excavator out of Paiwa Stream in Waipahu after trying for six days. That's the latest from Keoki Miyamoto, deputy director of the Department of Facility Maintenance.

At 5:30 p.m., Miyamoto said, two privately owned tow trucks helped lift the excavator out of the deep mud where it was stuck. About an hour later, they were still putting the machine on a flatbed truck to take it to get cleaned and working again.

Miyamoto said the routine stream cleaning turned into a frustrating ordeal for city crews. The excavator got stuck on Friday, then a bulldozer sent in to help it out got stuck, too.

The city got the bulldozer out earlier this week but couldn't extricate the excavator until late yesterday.

"It's kind of embarrassing," Miyamoto said. But "these kinds of things can happen."

City road maintenance division chief Larry Leopardi said the excavator was working on routine stream cleaning, pulling out tree stumps and other debris when it ran into a soft spot in the stream.

"It kind of bogged down and then it slowly just sank down," Leopardi said.