A man trapped up an old cell phone tower was the subject of a daring rescue by firefighters in Burleson in the United States on Wednesday night. The 25 year old man found himself trapped 750 feet in the air on the old cell phone tower until the bold rescue, which took several hours to pull off. The man was part of a crew who had been working on the tower, which was situated at 3700 block on County Road 919, located in Johnson County, when he lost consciousness. When he regained consciousness, he attempted to get down the tower but suffered an attack of claustrophobia and became trapped and unable to move any further.
“I’m sure the heat had a lot to do with it,” notes Burleson spokeswoman Sally Ellertson. Local firefighters were called and arrived on the scene at 7.48pm. It took an hour for even one firefighter to be able to reach the trapped man and provide him with fluids and oxygen, though conditions made it impossible for him to provide him with an IV. “From what I understand, there was a large gap between the tower and the platform,” Ellertson notes.
The man was finally rescued by 2.30am. “One (firefighter) would walk up and then stop and then the other would walk up and stop,” Ellertson says. “Between that and the heat, they had to stop for breaks. I can’t even imagine the heat on a metal structure.”