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Screams from storm drain lead to 'borderline miraculous' rescue in Antioch, California, US
Screams for help from a storm drain led to the "risky" rescue of a man trapped for two days in a 16-inch diameter pipe in Northern California, fire fighters said. 50 rescuers from the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District and other agencies pulled a man in his 30s from a storm drain Sunday, 20 March 2022, in Antioch, the department said in a series of Twitter posts. The complex rescue took three and a half hours, fire fighters said. "A couple of things are borderline miraculous: that passers-by heard his cries and reported them to 911," spokesman Steve Hill said. Fire fighters initially couldn't reach the area but a battalion chief insisted on continuing to search for the man, Hill added. The man told fire fighters he had been trapped in the 15-foot-deep pipe for two days.
Contra Costa County Fire Protection District’s response included Truck 84, Engine 85 (Pittsburg), Truck 83, Rescue 82, Engine 81, Engine 88 (Antioch) Rescue 10, Safety/Training Captain 10 (Concord), Investigator 80,(Pittsburg), Breathing Support 7, (Walnut Creek), Battalion 8 (Pittsburg), Battalion 5, (Brentwood), M53 & M86 (Con Fire - EMS), Antioch PD and Antioch Public Works. The complex, high risk, and rare “confined space” rescue was conducted by specially trained fire fighter technicians from Con Fire and East Contra Costa Fire with support from City of Antioch Public Works and Antioch PD. Four Con Fire fire fighters, connected by umbilical cords for breathing air and underground communications, made entry into the storm water infrastructure, locating the victim, clearing considerable debris blocking his path and bringing him to the surface shortly before 21h00. “As an all-risk fire agency, we train for rare rescues such as this,” said Contra Costa County Fire Protection District Fire Chief Lewis Broschard. “Still, this was a complex and high risk rescue effort that required extensive specialized resources and the skill and experience of many professionals from across the District to successfully complete.” Confined space rescues are both uncommon and high risk. They are highly complex for many reasons including oftentimes the unknown location and condition of the victim and the potential risks to both victim and rescuers. Confined spaces such as these are not intended for humans to occupy, consequently, they may be an oxygen-deficient environment not capable of supporting human life. In this case, uncertain of how to successfully reach the man through several potential access points, the incident commander ordered two simultaneous rescue attempts from opposite sides of the drainage pipe. The first, which eventually proved successful, involved sending rescue fire fighters into a nearby underground vault to make their way to and free the victim. At the same time, City of Antioch Public Works responders were directed to use a backhoe to dig down to the underground pipe on the opposite side of the victim’s location in case it became necessary to break it open to effect a rescue from that direction. Con Fire fire fighters routinely train to conduct restricted space and a wide variety of other rescue types at our Training Division on Treat Boulevard in Concord. In addition to academic training facilities, the Con Fire training campus has many sophisticated training props designed to allow fire fighters to train in the most realistic environments possible for rescues such as this. Rescuers were unable to determine the man’s motivation for entering the storm water drainage system or his exact entry point, which is believed to have been some distance from the rescue location. Once brought to the surface, the victim was evaluated at the scene, determined to be uninjured, and transported to Sutter Delta for further evaluation. It's not clear why he had ventured into the pipe. "He had crawled into this very small storm water drainage pipe until he came to a fairly significant debris field and could not go back," Hill said. A team of four fire fighters entered the maze of storm drains and managed to clear enough debris to extricate the man, added Hill. "Not only is the victim at risk when they're stuck down but any rescuers that you put underground are also at risk," he said. Antioch is a city of 111 000 people on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta east of San Francisco. Sources: Contra Costa County Fire Protection District (Con Fire), The Sacramento Bee |
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