STEEPLEJACK RESCUED

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 January 1937, Page 12

STEEPLEJACK RESCUED

“DANGLING LIKE AN APPLE.”

SAN FRANCISCO, December 2. Two hundred feet above ground, Steeplejack Robert Berierter set aside his brush, reached for the rope supporting his wooden seat and began to lower himself along the smokestack he had been painting in Granite City in the State of Illinois. The rope slipped and he lurched for it frantically, but he was too late. With a sickening swish he plummeted past the smooth sides of the stack. Eighty feet he plunged, the coils of the rope whistling and burning past his legs. His body twisted and twirled and his heel thrust into a loop of rope. With a jerk that strained every tendon he was brought up short, dangling head down 120 feet above ground. His brush and paint pail smashed below. As his breath and consciousness returned Berierter looked up at his feet. To reach the rope would require a struggle that might loosen the rope and send him plunging the rest, of the way. He looked down and saw a crowd gathering. Someone called the Granite City Fire Brigade. Firemen raised their ladder —the longest one in the city—but it was too short. The East St. Louis Fire Department was called. They had a longer ladder, but while he waited, fighting to stay conscious, the wind caught Berierter and smashed him against the smoke stack. He dangled like an apple on a string. ANOTHER DISAPPOINTMENT There was a cheer from below when the East St. Louis department arrived. Cautiously the end of the long ladder was thrust up the side of the stack. It went up 115 feet and stopped, for that was the limit. Berierter was still five feet from safety and helpless. in the face of almost impossible chance two East St. Louis tiremen started up the stack with ropes. From the top of the ladder they heaved a coil about the stack above their heads and above Berierter. Holding to their rope they inched themselves slowly up the side of the stack to the marooned steeplejack. Two more firemen stepped up the ladder. The men beside Berierter braced themselves, tied another rope about him. and cut the one that entangled his feet. Slowly they lowered him to the men on the ladder. When they reached the ground Berierter had been taken to a hospital where physicians said he suffered only from a wrenched leg.