Firefighters used rope, a crane and a rescue stretcher to help save the life of a man working in New Haven Harbor.
The rescue occurred Tuesday morning.
Here’s what happened, according to Assistant Fire Chief Matthew Marcarelli:
The fire department received a call at 10:03 that a man had fallen off the Maritime Center parking garage.
That proved false. What happened instead was that an operating engineer working on a project for the Magellan company — putting moorings in for fuel ships, in the water at the corner of Forbes Avenue and East Street — somehow ended up in the water.
He had his life preserver on. His co-workers found him face down.
They got him out of the water onto a raft. They tried to revive him using CPR.
Firefighters arrived. Using “some rope and a rigging system and a crane [the company] had on site, we raised him up to the barge,” Marcarelli reported. “Then we carried him to shore in a rescue stretcher over a piece of scaffolding they had.”
It took 16 firefighters in all to complete the complicated rescue.
The engineer is in the hospital in “extremely serious” condition.
Meanwhile, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the incident.
