Incredible moment Colorado mountain rescue workers save a HOUSE that slips off a cliff edge when semi it was being moved on jackknifes
- The entire mission to save the 32,000lbs home took a painstaking nine hours
- Tow workers tasked with getting it back to safety feared the property would crumble like a ‘pile of toothpicks’
Brave Colorado mountain rescue workers managed to save a house that had slipped off an icy cliff edge when a semitractor-trailer moving it jackknifed.
The 13ft modular home slid over a steep cliffside in the Colorado Rocky Mountains on November 21 – and tow workers tasked with getting it back to safety feared the property would crumble like a ‘pile of toothpicks.’
The entire mission to save the 32,000lbs home took nine hours of painstaking back-and-forth – and miraculously, there was minimal damage thanks to the skilled, quick thinking tow workers.
Charlie Stubblefield, Mountain Recovery’s owner, told the Summit Daily: ‘It was definitely top five in terms of level of difficulty, and it’s because you’re dealing with an oversized load. It’s 13 feet, 6 inches tall, 16 feet wide and 60 feet long.
The 13ft modular home slid over a steep cliffside in the Colorado Rocky Mountains on November 21 – and tow workers tasked with getting it back to safety feared the property would crumble like a ‘pile of toothpicks’
Colorado mountain rescue workers managed to save a house that had slipped off an icy cliff edge when a semitractor-trailer moving it jackknifed
A post shared by Mountain Recovery (@mountainrecovery)
Stubblefield added: ‘It was never meant to be on anything other than super flat ground, and now we have it in the most extreme position, which is off an embankment a guy can’t even stand on. It’s a 45-degree angle or better.’
The ordeal started when semitractor-trailers hauling the disassembled home were struggling to complete the last stretch up a dirt road off Colorado Highway 9. As a result, they called the towing company.
Mountain Recovery helped two semis get halfway up the hill before one of the drivers decided to make the rest of the way on his own – with dodgy truck chains.
Despite being warned by Mountain Recovery’s tow operator, the driver continued on – causing the home to go sliding down.
Stubblefield said: ‘We’re assuming he missed a gear, because when you miss a gear you have to stop when you have that much load.
‘He came to a stop halfway up this incline, and just slid back, jackknifed, and then the modular home slid off the edge.’
They couldn’t use a crane because the mountain road was too narrow for it.
The ordeal started when semitractor-trailers hauling the disassembled home were struggling to complete the last stretch up a dirt road off Colorado Highway 9. As a result, they called the towing company
The home is seen attached to a semitractor-trailers
The entire mission to save the 32,000lbs home took nine hours of painstaking back-and-forth – and miraculously, there was minimal damage thanks to the skilled, quick thinking tow workers
Instead the tow company used rotating booms to get the correct angles on the sliding house, so that it could securely be brought up from the mountainside.
Stubblefield added: ‘All those operators and all those winches had to be in sync so that the load stays distributed and it doesn’t just go to some of the straps or one of the straps.
‘So it’s really a coordinated dance. They had to be perfectly synchronized so that every point that touched the house had the same amount of pressure.
‘The amazing thing was when it went off it didn’t sustain a lot of damage. It sustained some.
‘But the modular home had many large windows, sliding doors, things of that nature.
‘None of them were broken when it went into the hole. And none were broken when it came out.’
Source: Read Full Article
