Man stuck upside down in rail car for 18 hours

SEATTLE, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Seattle firefighters said they rescued a man who climbed into a chute attached to a railroad car and ended up stuck upside down for 18 hours.

Kyle Moore of the Seattle Fire Department said people on the Burke-Gilman Trail near the railroad tracks called 911 when they heard a voice shouting for help and firefighters arrived to find the 25-year-old man was stuck with his feet sticking out the top of the chute.

"We don't see these very often," Moore told KOMO-TV. "Apparently overnight he had crawled into a hole in a void space of the car and slid head-first at a 45 degree angle down this little chute and was stuck... He could not move, [and] he was stuck in this very small confined space."

Moore said the man's reasons for climbing into the chute were unclear.

"If he actually successfully made it through the small hole at the end he would have just been underneath the train car," he said.

It took firefighters about 20 minutes to pull the man to safety by his feet.

"We wanted to make sure we used all of our skills to get him out of this very small hole without causing any further injury to him," Moore said.

The man, who told rescuers he was stuck for about 18 hours, was taken to Swedish Medical Center's Ballard campus.

"We're very fortunate that people walking on the trail noticed what was going on and called us," he said.