Tuesday, March 23, 2021, started out like any other as dusk settled over Colorado Springs. The evening rush hour commute had just died down on the brisk, early spring evening. However, all of that was soon about to change.
Around 6:45 p.m. someone called into the Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD) that there was a man climbing a transmission tower right off of I-25. The man was on the move: making his way up an 80-foot tall, fully energized, 115kv lattice transmission tower, right by the on ramp to I-25, going north at Tejon.
As soon as we received the call, we dispatched a crew to de-energize the line and ground it for safety reasons.
For nearly six grueling hours in temperatures that hovered in the upper 20s with intermittent snow blinding the scene at times, Colorado Springs Utilities, paramedics, CSPD, the Colorado State Patrol and the Colorado Springs Fire Department (CSFD) stood by while the man moved around to various parts of the tower.
CSFD called in a negotiator; however, several different attempts to talk the man down from the tower all failed.
Around 11:45 p.m. our line crew noticed the man wasn’t moving anymore. Nearly everyone else had left the scene, but our crew stayed behind. They decided that if he still hadn’t made any movements by 12:10 a.m., they would go up and check on him.
At 12:10 a.m. on Wednesday, March 24, veteran linemen Cody Strong and Charles Peterson went up in a bucket truck to perform what is called a “hurtman rescue.” This is a maneuver all our linemen train for annually to safely bring an injured person down from a pole or transmission tower in a crisis situation, like when someone has become unconscious.
“He appeared lifeless. He wasn’t talking and his body was experiencing involuntary movements,” Strong recently explained when reflecting on the harrowing experience. “His sweatshirt got stuck on a piece of hardware on the tower and his arm was up in the air.”
Immediately recognizing the man did not have enough muscle control to hold himself up on the tower any longer, Strong and Peterson began performing the hurtman rescue about 50 feet in the air, safely bringing the man back to the ground.
“That could have turned out really differently for him,” Peterson said. “We were concerned about his wellbeing, so we just did what we thought was right.”
This was the first time either Strong or Peterson had the opportunity to perform the hurtman rescue in real life.
Strong has been with Springs Utilities for nine years and Peterson has been with the organization for nearly eight years—the last six of those working in electric. They received assistance on the ground from apprentices Josh Snyder and Michael Hoberg, who in addition to aiding with the rescue, got blankets for the man and kept him coherent until the ambulance arrived.
The team also had the support of their leaders: Crew Supervisor Andy Lopez and Operations Supervisor Shaun Dillon. While none of these real-life heroes want any recognition for what they did in saving a man’s life that night, they deserve special acknowledgement for stepping up to what was a very scary situation and bringing about the best possible outcome for everyone involved.
As we pause this April 18 to recognize National Lineman Appreciation Day, we want to say thank you to all of our amazing lineman for what they do each and every day to not only keep the electricity on in our community, but everything else that goes above and beyond the regular call of duty.