CHESAPEAKE, Va. — A man on a roof and a horse in a ditch.
That’s what was waiting for the Chesapeake Fire Department’s Technical Rescue Team this week.
The week began when a horse, named Patches, wandered off.
“It looks like Patches was off on a morning stroll. They called her over to eat, she didn’t come. They went somewhere on the property and they found her in a ditch,” said Marlon Church, a firefighter with the Chesapeake Fire Department.
He said they had to sedate Patches and then lift all 1,100 pounds of the horse out of the hole.
“Eventually, we ended up calling a tow truck out,” Church said. “We were able to lift Patches up and sit her on her feet.”
She had some scratches on her, but her owner says her horse is recovering nicely.
Then on Thursday, the team got a call about a man trapped under a tree on a roof. The man was working on the roof when the tree rolled on top of him.
“The person was actually hanging from the roof with his arm trapped under the tree,” said Lt. Shaun Williams with the Chesapeake Fire Department.
He said the fact that the tree was rotted made things more complicated.
“There was no way to tell which way it was gonna shift or not, or what it would do.”
Both Patches and the worker are home now and okay. Church said two complex rescues like this in one week is pretty unusual.
“Usually not two incidents so close together that really stretch our knowledge and dust some of the cobwebs off like that. So yeah, we had to get creative this week.”
Williams said that’s why they keep training.
“That’s why the rescue teams train for all types of events and so luckily they were prepared for this type of event and once they got on scene, they came up with a game plan.”
