A Southern California woman was trapped for two hours in an abandoned septic tank after she plummeted 25 feet when her patio’s tiles collapsed beneath her, emergency officials said.
She suffered minor injuries.
A 911 call around 9:45 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 8, brought rescue crews to the mobile home park in Fontana. The woman’s family said they had heard her yelling from outside the home and discovered a 3-foot-wide hole in the patio.
Eric Sherwin, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County Fire Department, said the crews rejected the idea of lowering a ladder because the woman had been injured from the fall and from tiles falling on her.
Instead, they constructed a tripod with a pulley for a rope and used a winch to lower a firefighter in a harness. The woman was lifted to the surface around noon and was taken to a hospital in an ambulance.
A neighbor said the woman is 39 years old and the mother of four children, from a 1-year-old son to a daughter in college.
Sherwin said the county’s search-and-rescue teams perform this type of rescue several times each year, particularly in the High Desert. He said septic tanks are typically in covered concrete vaults. He couldn’t say whether this accident was related to the week’s record-setting rainstorm.
In addition to the county fire department, a Rancho Cucamonga crew participated in the rescue.
