Naked man rescued after getting stuck on raised drawbridge

A naked man sitting on top of a drawbridge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was rescued on Friday. Fort Lauderdale police and rescuers were called to the railroad drawbridge at about 8:30am. Witnesses said the man was walking across the bridge when it began to rise, forcing him to scamper to the top.





"Once you're up there, I would imagine you realise that you don't want to be up there anymore," Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue Deputy Chief Timothy Heiser said. "There's no place to go. There's no way to climb down." Heiser said two firefighters scaled the bridge, made their way to the top, gave the man a sheet and secured him with a rope harness.





The bridge was then slowly lowered back down. "He didn't have much to say. He just wanted to get down," rescuer David Bassion said. When elevated, the bridge is about 100 feet high. The man was taken to Broward Health Medical Center to be treated for burns to the buttocks. The man had been swimming in the river.


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The FEC and New River were closed to all boating and train traffic for about three hours during the rescue operation. The Florida East Coast Railway bridge has had similar incidents in the past. In October 2013, Wanda McGowan, 55, of Dania Beach, was participating in a cancer walk when she got stuck on the bridge as it rose. She was clinging to the bridge about 22 feet above the tracks when she was rescued by firefighters.