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CHARLOTTE, NC– A worker who slipped and fell from the top of a cell phone tower is recovering Thursday night. He was taken to CMC-Main after he dangled high over East Charlotte for more than an hour.
It happened around 5pm Thursday at a cell tower off Shamrock Drive. The Charlotte Fire Department responded to the call. It took rescuers about 30 minutes to climb the tower, then attach the man to a lowering system.
“We were reassuring him that everything was going to be all right and we were going to get him down as quick as we could,” says Captain Joel Cherry of the Charlotte Fire Department.
Cherry and firefighter Kevin Walling, Climber 1 and Climber 2, say they are trained for these types of high angle rescue operations. They say it’s a slow and methodical process.
After 45 minutes, the team was able to lower the man to the ground. Cherry and Walling say the man was grateful.
“He told me he had two kids at home–one at home and one on the way–and that he really wanted to get home to them,” says Cherry.
Thanks to a lot of teamwork from the Charlotte Fire Department, a scary situation had a happy ending.
