A crew of Connecticut firefighters dedicated their Saturday afternoon to prying a grown man out of a children’s slide at a local playground after he got trapped inside the hot tube.
The 40-year-old man, who wasn’t identified, became stuck inside the enclosed slide at an elementary school in Vernon at around 4:30 p.m., the town’s fire department said.
The playground prisoner got “wedged feet and head first” about halfway down the slide — after apparently folding himself forward in an attempt to shimmy down the slide, fire officials said.
It’s unclear if he was at the playground with anyone else or decided to take a ride down the twisting tube slide on his own.
First responders rushed to the scene, but quickly realized they would need backup once they determined the only way to get the slide’s hostage out would be to cut the entire thing open.
Adding to the claustrophobic situation, the unseasonably hot temperatures and sun baking on the heavy-duty plastic structure made the 40-year-old start to get woozy, the fire department said.
While awaiting firefighters, medics provided oxygen to the unfortunate fellow who “was in extreme discomfort” and also set up ventilation into the heat dome to cool him down, authorities said.
Once the firetruck and crew arrived, they quickly got to work. First, they secured the top of the slide to the truck’s ladder, and then they began hacking away with a power tool at the thick plastic.
The middle-aged man was freed within 30 minutes — at the expense of the elementary school’s slide, a mere two weeks before the first day of school.
Photos show the man in the fetal position inside the sliced-open slide as a rescuer grabs hold of his socked feet.
EMS offered to take him to a nearby medical center for further evaluation, but he refused.
“While this is a unique call for service for the fire department, the professionalism shown on scene was exemplary,” the Vernon Fire Department wrote on Facebook.
Several Nutmeggers and online commenters had a field day with the man’s perplexing plight.
“The firefighters were not gunna [sic] let that one slide,” one woman commented on the department’s Facebook post.
“Imagine getting stuck then they do a whole photo shoot of it for you. Poor guy,” another user sympathized, referring to the 16 photos the department shared along with its post.
As some other commenters noted, being trapped in tight spaces like a slide can trigger ungodly levels of claustrophobia that would put a visit to the MRI to shame.
One man in Arizona who authorities believed was homeless got stuck inside a waterslide pipe and died while trying to call for help. The entire slide had to be dismantled to free his corpse.
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