EAST PALO ALTO, CA—The Menlo Park Fire Protection District is no stranger to rescuing people from precarious positions, but a request earlier this week to pluck a man from an East Palo Alto billboard was a first.
East Palo Alto police summoned firefighters to the billboard near East Bayshore Road and Pulgas Avenue shortly after 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman. A man in his 30s was throwing things from the catwalk to get the attention of passers-by because he wanted to come down but was feeling “thirsty and weak.”
Schapelhouman said firefighters ultimately used the 108-foot ladder on one of its trucks as a makeshift crane to lift the man from the 25-foot billboard. The man was strapped into a metal litter and lowered to the ground, then taken to a hospital for an evaluation.
Firefighters have previously used the ladder to rescue people and animals from trees, creek beds, culverts, bridges, rooftops and open basements, according to the fire chief.
“I guess we can add billboards to that list,” he said.
It was not immediately known if the man scaled the billboard because of its weed delivery service advertisement.
“Someone suggested that the wording on the billboard may have been what made him climb up there,” Schapelhouman said. “Who knows?”
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