Firefighters rescue man clinging to freeway overpass

By Richard Brooks
Press Enterprise

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — A pedestrian stranded himself atop a concrete pillar of the Colton freeway interchange where he was later rescued by a Fire Department ladder truck and taken away for psychiatric evaluation, fire officials say.

The 8:30 p.m. incident Saturday, Feb. 2, closed the transition road from eastbound Interstate 10 to northbound I-215 for about a half-hour, said Engineer Jason Buchanan of the San Bernardino City Fire Department.

The well-dressed 43-year-old Victorville resident was not hurt.

"The man (had been) walking along the I-215 overpass," Buchanan said. "He claims … that he (accidentally) dropped a backpack."

So he climbed over the side of the transition road and dropped 10 to 15 feet onto the top of a support pillar - leaving him stranded 30 to 40 feet above the ground. "There was no place else for him to go," Buchanan said.

The man used a cellphone to call Fire Department dispatchers. But in the darkness, it took firefighters about an hour to find him.

A Colton Fire Department ladder truck was positioned on the bicycle path beside the riverbed below the interchange, and its 75-foot-long aerial ladder was extended to the stranded man, who clambered down.

Waiting officers took him to a hospital for a mental health check.

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