Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Pulled to safety after hours in well
Rescue crews pull a 52-year-old man from a well just off McPhillips Street Sunday afternoon. (RUTH BONNEVILLE@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)
Conway Whitstone and Vanessa Truden heard man yelling in well.
A man spent five hours trapped in an old well near the McPhillips Street casino before a couple out for a walk heard his cries for help and called 911.
The 52-year-old man, whose identity has not been released, fell almost eight metres into an old cement well located in a park behind a Manitoba Hydro electrical substation just off McPhillips Street near Logan Avenue.
He spent five hours standing in ankle-deep water, calling for help and banging metal bars together to make noise.
"It's lucky we walked by when we did. He could have been down there for days," said Conway Whitstone, who was walking in the park Sunday with his girlfriend, Vanessa Truden.
While his girlfriend ran to a nearby coffee shop to call 911, Whitstone stayed with the man, who appeared to have broken his ankle during the fall.
Rescuers from the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service set up a tripod over the well and lowered a firefighter and a harness down to the man. The well smelled like a sewer, so fresh air was pumped down to the bottom. There was barely enough room at the base of the well for the firefighter to get the man rigged up in a harness and backboard so he could be hoisted up.
Even so, it took less than an hour for rescuers to hoist the man out of the well and send him to Health Sciences Centre.
The man's feet were bloodied but he was conscious.
Police said they hoped to interview the man in his hospital room Sunday night, to find out if he knew how the heavy grate cover had been moved and how he'd come to fall down the well, which is 1.2 metres above the ground.
The man did not respond to a Free Press interview request.
Acting district chief Chuck Jonasson said firefighters have rescued people from wells before but it's not common. It's not clear how or why the man ended up in the well, he added.
The well, a barrel-shaped cement structure that protrudes 1.2 metres above ground, was covered by a heavy metal grate that had been removed, though it's not clear by whom.
It took two firefighters to hoist the grate into place following the rescue.
Jonasson said the city was asked to bolt the grate into place. The well could have been connected to an old reservoir located off Logan Avenue.
maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 16, 2009 A3
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