WATCH: Thirty-year-old was trying to rescue a cat, from the tree, when he got stuck in tree himself. Kendall Hanson has more.
It’s a strange predicament to be in. It was past 10 p.m. Monday night and firefighters were trying to figure out how to get a man down from a tree.
“It’s a one of (a kind),” Cpt. Earl Tenhave with Nanaimo Fire Rescue, said. “[I’ve] never been to a call like this before.”
Behind a row of townhouses on Creekside Drive are some tall trees. For the past four days Mickey the Cat has been stuck in one of them.
“Zach lives in the complex. He offered to go up and try and get the cat down,” Matthew Purchase, the cat’s owner, said.
“Then he dropped his flashlight. Zach got stuck and now the fire department is here.”
The firefighters were able to get a ladder over the townhouse close to Zach’s location, with paramedics standing by. He was 14 metres or 45 feet off the ground.
“Now Zach I want you to slide over that way,” one of the firefighters said from the ladder bucket.
“It’s looking good,” Purchase said during the rescue. “We can see Zach now and he’s only four or five feet now from the fire department’s bucket.”
“We can see Zach now and he’s only four or five feet now from the fire department’s bucket.”
Eventually, Zach made it into the bucket and firefighters bring the avid rock climber back to solid ground.
“Our trucks [are] very long,” Tenhave said about the extendable ladder. “It can do 105 feet (32 m) and we were at the limit so we decided on going for it and seeing if we could reach it and we could just reach him.”
“It can do 105 feet (32 m) and we were at the limit so we decided on going for it and seeing if we could reach it and we could just reach him.”
“Within the first 20 minutes, my arms started getting really exhausted so I just decided just to hang on wait,” Zach Fawcett said after being rescued. “I knew they were coming so. They were very thorough with getting me out of the tree. They told me exactly what to do and gave me some light.”
The fire department said calling for help was the right thing to do but going up to rescue the cat, especially at night, was not, as cats will almost always come down trees on their own.
Kendall Hanson
