Photo: Jason Scott/CP
Posted on 06/25/2003 6:59:35 AM PDT by Loyalist
Photo: Jason Scott/CP
Jason Melien holds his head Tuesday after his friend Jeff Pruder fell into an uncovered manhole.
Edmonton — They were walking together, as they had so many times before, taking a late-night short cut across a grassy field to get home from a sports bar.
Then one of two men suddenly vanished.
"I was walking right beside him and we were talking, and then the next thing I know he's gone," said Ryan Wilson.
Mr. Wilson's friend, Jeff Puder, 25, fell down a 32-metre deep shaft — the height of a 10-storey building — in the early morning darkness Tuesday.
"And I could kind of hear him going down, down, down, eh? And I just freaked," Mr. Wilson said.
The manhole cover for the shaft, which leads to Edmonton's main storm sewer tunnel, was lying beside the hole.
"I looked down and he was gone. And it sounded like he was really, really deep — I didn't know how deep he was," Mr. Wilson added.
Mr. Wilson peered into the hole but saw nothing but black. He shouted and Mr. Puder yelled back.
"He was pretty scared. He was in so much pain, and I couldn't do a thing about it," Mr. Wilson said.
Mr. Wilson ran to Mr. Puder's townhouse, told another friend call 911, then they raced back to the shaft. Mr. Puder's pleas for help were echoing off the sides of the shaft.
"He was saying, 'Get help,' and 'I can't hold on,' " Mr. Wilson said. "And I was saying, 'Buddy, you can do it. Help is on the way.'''
Eight firefighters set up a rope-and-pulley system, suspended from a metal tripod over the narrow shaft, said Captain Dave Pointon.
Firefighter Russ Kocuper, the leanest of the bunch at six feet tall and 175 pounds, was lowered down the shaft, which is only 60 centimetres wide.
Fifteen metres down, Mr. Kocuper lost radio contact with firefighters on the surface. The shaft was so deep that more rope had to be added to permit the descent.
"It was like being in a small, cold cave all the way down," Mr. Kocuper said. "It seemed like it was going down forever and ever and when I finally reached the bottom, he was alive. I was just shocked."
He found Mr. Puder lying on his stomach in a half-metre deep stream of water, holding his head out of the water with one arm.
"He just kept telling me how he wanted to get out of that situation, how he had enough, how he wanted to leave," Mr. Kocuper said.
He comforted Mr. Puder, then helped him into a safety harness before manoeuvring him from the chamber back up into the shaft. He then clipped himself back into the rope system and yelled for them to be pulled up.
Mr. Puder was in stable condition Tuesday afternoon, said a Capital Health spokesman.
Leah Evans, Mr. Puder's girlfriend, said he had surgery for serious fractures to his legs and spine.
Mr. Pointon said Mr. Puder could have drowned if he had been knocked unconscious. His "stocky" build, especially his well-developed upper body, also helped, Mr. Pointon said.
"He's a big boy, and that's what saved him. [The shaft] was a tight fit, so he kind of rattled all the way down. It injured him but it saved his life."
City workers have locked the 90-kilogram manhole cover in place and police are investigating why the cover was off.
He was on his way home from a Sperts Bar.
He was drunk, that's what saved him.
No sober man could have survived that fall.
So9
So9
"Dude! Like my friend has fallen down this manhole! Like, what do I do?"
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