A man trapped atop a burning building was saved by a crane worker in a quick race against time.
According to the Daily Mail, Glen Edwards spotted the man waving his coat for help amidst the smoke and nearby flames on Thursday in Reading, England.
Edwards, 65, was operating a crane nearby. He said, “I was no more than 20 metres up in the air and I looked out my left-hand window and saw a guy standing on the corner of the building.”
“I’d only just seen him and someone said, ‘Can you get the cage on’, so that was it, I got the cage on and got it over to him the best I could. It was quite windy conditions,” he added.
Edwards downplayed the fast three-minute rescue, but did note, “I would say it was a very close call, if you look at the video at the way the wind was swirling around there.”
“I tried to put the cage down between him and the flames, but I was hampered by the wind swirling around there. But I got the cage down and I managed to get him in there,” He concluded.
The high-rise One Station Hill office development was under construction when the fire broke out.
Christopher Hutton of the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service stated, “At its peak, over 50 firefighters were on the scene from fire stations across the county.”
A Thames Valley Police officer noted, “I saw a man getting rescued. He’s in an ambulance in hospital now, he lobbed himself in the cage, I ran in the building and shouted is anyone in there.”
“I don’t think there was loads of people, only a couple of people working on the roof,” he added.
A carpenter who had also been working nearby said, “I was in the next-door building, there was a guy standing up there (on top of the building), luckily the crane came in just in time.”
“When he got inside the crane and the crane put him down everyone was clapping,” he added.
The fire was extinguished, and only two people were injured. Everyone working the site has been accounted for.
