California firefighters rescued a tree trimmer who couldn't free himself from the very palm fronds he was trying to prune Wednesday. A Fresno firefighter's helmet camera was able to capture the rescue.
Fresno crews were called in just after 9 a.m. after the man became trapped high in a palm tree that he had been hired to trim by an individual living in the neighborhood, KGPE-TV reports. Once they were at the scene, firefighters placed a harness and an oxygen mask on the worker before removing the fronds and debris, being careful not to sever the line already attached to him.
"We ended up using our hands, and one by one, pulling it out …," Fresno Fire Capt. Lupe Fernandez told KGPE. "(H)e was buried so far in there we couldn't see his safety rope, which we knew was holding him to some degree. We didn't want to cut his rope, and we couldn't see him clearly, so we had to, one by one, move him out."
The rescue took a little more than 15 minutes to perform, and the man, who was taken to a local hospital, is expected to recover from his injuries, according to the TV station.
