San Diego police were on their way to a home in the Paradise Hills neighborhood to respond to a domestic issue when they received an updated report that a woman was stuck headfirst in a chimney.
Police received reports at approximately 5 p.m. of a domestic issue at a home on Alleghany Street and Flintridge Drive, according to San Diego Fire-Rescue Department Battalion Chief Tommy Charpentier.
While officers were on their way to the scene, they received an updated report that an individual had become stuck inside the chimney, which prompted the officers to request assistance from fire rescue resources.
“When we had crews first arrive at scene, we did confirm that she was stuck headfirst with her feet up in the chimney, about midway down,” Charpentier said. “Her head was approximately six feet off the ground and she was eight or ten feet from the top of the chimney.”
The rescue crews worked to put together a plan, then began attempting to free the woman from multiple angles of the home. Ultimately, the best course of action ended up being to pull her up out of the top of the chimney onto the roof. It took thirty minutes for the crew to extract her from the chimney, which means that the woman was trapped inside for nearly an hour.
“We had crews inside that were attempting to breach the wall to access her, as well as crews go to the roof of the house and use a tripod and a rope and a winch system,” Charpentier said. “And that’s how we ended up getting her out, pulling her up out the top of the chimney and then putting her into a basket to bring her safely down off the roof.”
The woman was taken to a local hospital after she was rescued from the chimney, though her condition is unknown.
According to Charpentier, while the incident wasn’t a typical situation for the first responders, they worked quickly in a coordinated effort between San Diego Police and rescue departments from Chula Vista and National City. The crew worked as fast as they could to remove the woman from the chimney, to make sure that her condition did not worsen.
No information was released on how or why she ended up in the chimney.
