Injured man rescued from sewer pipe under San Francisco's Great Highway

Firefighters rescued an injured man trapped inside a sewer pipe underneath the Great Highway in San Francisco's Outer Sunset neighborhood early Sunday morning, a fire department spokesman said.

The fire department got a call at 3:41 a.m. Sunday from a man who said he heard screaming in the vicinity of a manhole on upper Great Highway near Vicente Street, said San Francisco Fire Department Lt. Mariano Elias.

Apparently, the man somehow got into the pipe and then crawled along inside the pipe, which was 20 feet below street level, Elias said. At some point there was a downward drop in the pipe, and the man fell on his head, according to Elias.

"Performing a rescue inside a confined space like a sewer pipe involves getting an OSHA permit to enter the confined space," Elias said. After all the proper protocols were observed, firefighters found the man and rescued him, extricating him from the pipe shortly after 5 a.m., according to Elias.

The man was taken to San Francisco General Hospital with what Elias described as serious injuries.

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• Rescue
• San Francisco Fire Department
• San Francisco