Worker Trapped on Crane Dangling Over Fire Rescued

A construction worker trapped on top of a swaying 250-foot crane above a raging fire for more than an hour was rescued Monday by a firefighter dangling perilously from a helicopter cable.

While the flames were threatening below, firefighter Matt Mosely climbed onto the crane and scrambled to the end, where Ivers Sims was waiting anxiously.

Mosely strapped Sims into a harness and held on tightly as both were lowered by the helicopter to the grass nearby. Sims walked to a stretcher, and spectators applauded as he was wheeled to an ambulance.

He was in stable condition Monday night with smoke inhalation and heat exposure.

Mosely, 30, said he tried to joke with Sims to take his mind off the raging heat.

“I told him his boss sent me up so he could knock off early,” Mosely said. “That helped lighten things up a little bit. He was pretty much calm.”

Mosely said that as he dangled above the fire, he thought only one thing: “I hope the rope doesn’t break.”

Larry Rogers, who was in the helicopter to guide the pilot and the cable, said the flames were intensely hot even 80 feet above the cable.

“I had to put my visor down,” he said. “The heat was pretty tough.”

Boyd Clines, the pilot of the state-owned helicopter used for fighting forest fires, said the flight was very turbulent because of the flames and wind.

He said he was trying to fly quickly because “the crane was on fire. It was kind of a time limit. We didn’t have all day to do it.”

Clines, a former Army pilot, has worked for the state’s Department of Natural Resources for 20 years.

“People say, ‘You seem to be really calm,’ but when you’ve been training for this, you just do it--it’s your job,” he said. “I used to pluck Special Forces teams out of Laos and Cambodia.”

The fire had engulfed an old five-story mill that was being converted to loft apartments in east Atlanta. It spread to at least two houses.

Sims had crawled onto a concrete counterweight on the end of the crane’s horizontal arm to get away from the black smoke and flames rising from the red brick building.

Smoke and flames could be seen at the center of the crane, about 20 feet from where Sims waited to be rescued. The crane was swaying in winds with gusts to more than 20 mph.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the blaze.