A Maryland man was rescued hours after he fell into a 30-foot-deep well.
The unidentified man in Catonsville was rescued on the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 16, after falling into a deep well in the rear of his home around 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 15, Baltimore County Fire Department (BCFD) representative Travis Francis confirms to us.
The man told the BCFD that it was dark and the sun came back out. “That’s when he knew a day had passed for help,” Francis tells PEOPLE. “That’s when his neighbors probably heard him home for help,”
Neighbor Wesley Straffin heard the man’s cries for help when he went to his backyard to get his dogs, according to WBAL: “I heard some dude calling for help, so I didn’t know what to do. So I went downstairs and grabbed my dad, and we went in the backyard to look around, see if we could hear anything.”
The Baltimore County Fire Department on Oct. 15, 2024.
Baltimore County Fire Department/X
Wesley and his father, Matt, then tried to pinpoint the source of the cries. “We started to call out ‘Hello, hello,’ because we couldn’t tell where it was coming from,” Matt told the outlet. “And he started replying. He said, ‘Help! Help! Hello?’ And it turns out it was our neighbor right behind us who had fallen into a well.”
The father-son duo then called 911 and provided the man with water.
“I don’t think he knew it was there,” Matt added. “Looked like the ground just gave way. It was about a two-and-a-half-foot wide hole.”
Wesley added that the man was at the bottom with a “metal pole sticking out,” noting that he believed the man “used it to try and climb out earlier.”
The Baltimore County Fire Department on Oct. 15, 2024.
Baltimore County Fire Department/X
Francis says that once authorities arrived at the scene, the BCFD’s urban search and rescue technicians, who are also certified as confined space technicians, worked with Howard County Department of Fire Rescue Services’ confined space rescuers to remove the man. Additionally, BCFD’s hazardous materials team monitored the air on the ground to make sure there was still enough oxygen for both the man and the rescuer when he went down to make the rescue.
“They used a hoist system off of one of our ladder trucks to lower a rescuer down to the injured subject. He was able to assess him for injuries, secure him in a lift, and then they hoisted him back up using a rope pulley system to where our EMS crew was waiting at the top of the hole,” Francis says.
Although the man’s incident was “considered a serious fall,” Francis says, “there was nothing going on that would have threatened his life.”
The man was taken to the University of Maryland Medical Center Shock Trauma for back and shoulder pain, per WBAL. He remains conscious and is recovering at the hospital.
“Thank God it could have been a lot worse,” Wesley told WBAL. “I’m thankful that we heard him and that help arrived as fast as it did.”
