A Fort Worth firefighter trying to help rescue a transient who had fallen into a church's 35-foot cooling tower Tuesday had to be extricated after he, too, fell.
Firefighters were called to First Presbyterian Church near Summit Avenue and 13th Street about 7:10 a.m. Tuesday after a member of a visiting youth group heard the transient's cries for help.
Lt. Robert Parker, 47, was peering down the tower to see the injured man when he tumbled in, said Lt. Kent Worley, Fire Department spokesman.
"He was evaluating what we were going to need to do, where the transient was, when a piece of that area up there that he was standing on gave way," Worley said.
Parker fell 20 to 25 feet, landing on his side on a concrete block alongside the transient. The block is about 10 feet from the bottom of the tower, Worley said.
The Fire Department's technical rescue team used an aerial ladder and rope and pulleys to lower firefighters into the tower. There, the firefighters secured the transient in a sked -- an orange plastic device that works similarly to a cocoon. He was lifted to freedom at 8:35 a.m.
Ten minutes later, Parker was lifted from the tower in a harness, Worley said.
The transient, who officials say appeared to have suffered leg and elbow injuries, was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital. His identity and condition were not available Tuesday.
Parker, a 24-year Fire Department veteran, fractured his right wrist and bruised his kidney in the fall. He was admitted to Harris Methodist Fort Worth hospital, where he will undergo surgery for the wrist injury, Worley said.
Toni Hull, a 17-year-old youth group member from Fremont, Neb., said she was awake inside the church gym, where the group had spent the night, when she heard a man's cries of "Help! Help!"
The rest of the group was asleep, Hull said.
"It was like he was scared," she said. "Like a kid who had been crying."
The teen awoke other members of the group, and she and another teen went outside to find out what was happening, she said. At first, they couldn't tell where the echoed yells for help were coming from, Hull said. Then, the man inside the cooling tower flung two lengths of broken pipe out the top of the tower, showing his location, she said.
Hull got one of the church group's advisers, who called the Fire Department.
The Nebraska group is in town for the church's Urban Work Camp, in which children from rural areas or smaller towns come to a large city to experience mission work such as volunteering at night shelters.
Dana Fickling, the church's business administrator, said that had the group not been there, it's hard to say how long the man would have gone unnoticed. The tower is behind the church.
"Because of the location of the cooling tower, it might have been 30 minutes to an hour before anybody was around there," Fickling said.
Fickling said how the man got into the tower, which has a closed, locked entrance at the top, was a mystery to her.
Fire officials said it was unknown why the transient went inside the tower.
"I don't know if he was just trying to get out of the conditions and find a place that was dry," Worley said.
Lt. Abdul Pridgen, a police spokesman, said police have discussed the matter with church representatives and do not plan to seek any charges against the transient at the church's request.
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