Firefighters Save 10 in Lofty London Rescue
A lift with the workers aboard became stranded outside the 22nd floor of a hospital building. The gap between it and the building's wall was about 15 feet. A London Fire Brigade technical rescue team got them down.
Firefighters from the London Fire Brigade made a successful high-altitude rescue Aug. 23 of 10 contract workers from a lift that became stuck outside the 22nd floor of a hospital building. For the stranded workers, the three-hour predicament was so stressful that they "were singing to try to and take their minds off being stuck," said Laurie Kenny, one of the brigade's technical rescue advisors at the scene.
"A couple of them were quite nervous, but firefighters did a great job at calming them down," he said. "It must've been pretty hair-raising for them being stuck so high up."
The rescue team brought fall harnesses to the men and were able to remove them from the lift into the building's 21st floor. About 15 firefighters were on scene during the rescue, which ended a few minutes before 11 p.m. local time, according to the brigade's news release.
"I'd like to praise the work of all of the firefighters involved. These incidents are few and far between, but they did a fantastic job," Kenny said.
The release noted the rescue preceded the World Rescue Challenge by only a few weeks. The brigade is the host agency for the Oct. 18-20 event at the ExCeL, London, in which firefighter rescue teams from around the world will compete.