The fire captain who responded to the call hadn’t seen anything like it in his 27 years of fighting fires and rescuing Londoners.
An unidentified London woman was rescued close to noon on Monday after becoming trapped in her garage on Devos Drive near Fanshawe Park Road and Adelaide Street.
Unable to reach her cellphone and notify authorities or acquaintances, she had been stuck there for two days.
“She has a disability and uses a lift to get her into the vehicle,” deputy fire chief Brian McLaughlin said. “Somehow the lift malfunctioned,” leaving her wedged up against the automobile.
A friend who hadn’t seen the woman came by and called emergency services once she found the woman in the garage.
“This is a very unusual situation,” McLaughlin said. “With our assistance, she was removed.”
McLaughlin, too, has never come across a similar situation in his career. “I’ve never had a lift for a wheelchair get stuck,” he recalled.
It’s the kind of nightmare scenario one sees in television commercials for products and services such as Life Call, the company that famously advertised an elderly woman on her back telling emergency call-centre staff, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
McLaughlin pointed out there are numerous similar firms. “People want to live independently and rightly so,” he said. “There are some products out there to notify agencies et cetera.”
Coincidentally, this week is emergency-preparedness week.
McLaughlin urged Londoners to think about having an emergency contact that doesn’t depend solely on cellphone service. “It’s about trying to prepare yourself,” he said, adding of the disabled woman, “Thankfully, she had the network to assist.”
The woman was taken to hospital with what are believed to be non-life-threatening injuries.
“Ideally, you have a support network,” McLaughlin said. “We all need somebody.”
