Laundry chute traps teenager

By ANGELA GREGORY and GREGG WYCHERLEY

A teenager was wedged in a laundry chute at his Titirangi home for five hours yesterday until firefighters rescued him.

The 17-year-old was discovered stuck feet first down the chute in a linen cupboard of the two-storey house.

A neighbour had finally heard his calls for help.

The woman managed to get a table under his feet, which had been dangling in the laundry below.

Titirangi fire station officer Terry Batt said the youth became trapped at 8 am after his parents went to work.

The alarm was not raised until 1 pm.

"His arms were propped on the floor of the upper level.

"He was quite a large lad and his body filled the whole cross-section of the chute."

The teenager was losing blood circulation as the fire teams from Titirangi and Avondale got to work.

"His feet were swelling and going a bluish colour," said Mr Batt.

"I don't know what would have happened had he been there much longer."

The firefighters used a pinch bar and hammer to demolish the chute and then had to push the trapped teenager up from underneath.

Mr Batt said the youth was badly grazed and embarrassed.

He had not come clean about why he was in the laundry chute.

"It's a bit of a mystery to me. What he was saying did not make sense.

"We do see some strange things, but this just about tops it."

* In Hamilton, a man had to be rescued by the Fire Service after becoming wedged in a central heating duct in his house.

Hamilton fire station officer Neil Patrick said the man, an aircraft engineer, had crawled into the 40cm square duct in an attempt to get into a garage, which was locked from the inside.

The only access was through an internal lift, which was not working.

"So he decided the best thing to do was to lift the grating off the central heating duct upstairs and try to get down to the garage through the central heating unit."

Mr Patrick said if the man had not been able to use his cellphone to call for help he could have died in the duct because he lived alone and had no relatives in the area.

"He was right in the middle of the house and people wouldn't have heard him yelling.

"He could have screamed his lungs out all night and people wouldn't have heard him."

Mr Patrick said the incident was the strangest he had seen in his 22 years with the service.

"It's still got me absolutely dumbfounded ... I just can't believe it. He was pretty embarrassed about it. He knew how stupid he was."