Two people who could’ve drowned after their truck fell into a sinkhole in Colorado were saved thanks to an 18-year-old and his drone on Saturday.
The incident happened in Brighton, a suburb of Denver.
The area has been getting a lot of rain lately, which has increased water levels, said 18-year-old Josh Logue. He wanted to see if there were any roads washed out, so he flew one of his drones Saturday morning over an irrigation canal. That’s when he saw what he thought was a shadow.
His neighbor, Ryan Nuanes, is a firefighter for the Denver Fire Department and just so happened to be at the family’s garage sale. As the teen flew his drone over the irrigation canal, Nuanes had an odd feeling.
“It just didn’t look right, so I kind of took a closer peek … and figured out it was what we believed to be a car upside down,” Nuanes said.
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Curiosity leads to life-saving actions
Logue, his father and Nuanes hopped into a truck and drove about two miles to the irrigation canal to check things out in person.
Once they went to the scene, they found the vehicle inside the sinkhole and heard a horn or alarm going off.
“I really didn’t like that because in my experience as a firefighter, that’s typically what happens right after a car accident,” Nuanes said. “The horn gets damaged but the battery still has enough charge in it that it’ll make the horn go off until somebody disables it.”
The car was upside down and submerged in the water, which had filled the inside of the vehicle, he said.
Nuanes called for help and told dispatchers there may have been someone in the vehicle. When the person inside the vehicle started talking to them, he was shocked, he said.
“There were two people who said they were OK,” Nuanes recalled.
They were alright but had a six-inch air pocket where they could breathe. The pair had been in the car for about 15 minutes, they told him.
Logue’s father drove back to the house to get equipment to help rescue the people inside, including materials to hopefully hook the vehicle to his truck and move it.
Shortly after he left, the fire department arrived. Between the equipment Logue’s father brought back and the fire department, they were able to pull the vehicle forward enough to open the door and get the people inside of the vehicle out.
The fire department arrived at 9:32 a.m., said Brycen Garrison, fire chief for the Brighton Fire Rescue District.
“The car was completely upside down on arrival,” he said. “They were able to use some equipment to maneuver the car to its side. Once they were able to do that, they were actually able to open the doors.”
The people inside the vehicle were speaking when first responders arrived and were eventually taken to a local hospital, Garrison said.
He thinks their phones were likely submerged or wet so that’s why they couldn’t call for help themselves.
The fire chief said Colorado has gotten lots of rain recently, resulting in water washing out or eroding roadways.
“What I’m assuming happened is they were driving and just did not see the sinkhole,” Garrison said. “It was probably about as wide as the vehicle so driving up on it, you might not have seen it and you certainly wouldn’t have expected it.
This could’ve turned out differently, neighbor who aided in the rescue says
Logue’s neighbor, Nuanes, said the rescue is all due to a series of events that could’ve played out differently. He said the credit goes to Logue, whose drone helped him spot the people in trouble, as well as luck.
On Saturday morning, Nuanes had gotten off work and eventually checked out a garage sale the Logue family was having. From there, a conversation began about how a normally dry creek bed in the area was full of water that day.
“If we don’t go over to the garage sale and we don’t have this conversation about this creek, the kid doesn’t watch the drone,” he said. “If one link doesn’t happen, he doesn’t fly the drone down there and we don’t get there.”