Man rescued after falling down 25-foot well

VALE, N.C. — Crews in Vale rescued a man Friday who fell 25 feet down a well on private property.

The man was talking during the rescue, and he was airlifted to a hospital.

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Firefighters from Hickory, Newton, Maiden, and Cooksville worked together to get the man out of the well.

A neighbor came to the family farm looking for the 68-year-old victim and heard his cries for help down in the well, according to a witness.

He was doing some work on the inside of a stairwell and didn’t know the well, which was covered with some tin, existed, firefighters said.

He fell 25 feet into waist-deep water.

Firefighters set up a tripod and lowered a Hickory firefighter down into the well using a rope.

“Pretty rigging intense,” said Wendell Owens, battalion chief at the Hickory Fire Department. “You know there’s a lot of ropes, pulleys. A lot of mechanical advantages. Tripods, things to get the rescuers down to him. We train for these types of incidents really hard in the last several years and it paid off today.”

The man was in the well for about one hour before firefighters were notified.

It took another 1½ hours to get him out.