UPDATED: Baldwin Resident Rescued After Being Stuck in Pipe

A resident of the sub-100 block of Sunny Drive in south Baldwin Borough fell into a hole in his backyard at around 11:30 on Monday morning, lodging his foot in an exposed terracotta pipe.

The man's foot was stuck in the pipe for a little over an hour before a South Hills Area Council of Governments technical rescue team was able to free him, according to Todd Plunkett, assistant chief of Baldwin Emergency Medical Services.

"It was a very slow process to make sure we didn't injure him any more than he already is," Plunkett said. 

Paramedics arrived on the scene after the trapped resident's neighbor of 14 years, Noreen Winans, called for help. While out doing her own yard work, Winans said that she heard her neighbor calling out her name. Winans then tried to hoist him out of the hole but to no avail. Winans and the man's wife both could not dislodge him from the hole.
 
After medics stabilized the resident, putting him on oxygen and administering pain medication, they sat him on a tripod in order to lift the weight off of his leg, said Ed Davies, operations manager for the rescue team.

After carefully breaking the terracotta pipe and digging 3 feet down below it, the crew was able to use the tripod to slowly extract the resident from the hole.

"They don't think he even knew the hole was there," Davies said. 

The rescue was not a typical trench rescue or a confined space rescue and was unique for his crew, Davies said.

"This one is kind of strange," he said. "It's kind of taking a bunch of things we know how to do and putting it together."

The resident was taken to an area hospital after the rescue team extracted him from the pipe.

It is unclear how long the pipe had been exposed.

According to Baldwin Borough Manager John Barrett, this is this first incident that he is aware of where a resident got harmed by an exposed pipe.

Barrett said that, sometimes, residents find ways to deal with drainage issues stemming from large storms, like the ones that have happened lately, and that he is unsure whether the pipe was under borough control or if it was installed by someone else.

"The good news is he seems to be OK," Barrett said, "and it's good to see all facets of public safety coming together."