A trio of Dublin residents helped to bring a crew of painters safely to the ground after their lift stranded them high up against the Dublin Community Church steeple Tuesday afternoon.
Three painters were more than four stories in the air when their rented aerial lift ran out of fuel sometime Tuesday afternoon, stranding them on their high perch, Deputy Fire Chief Brian Barden said. Andy Hungerford, who lives next to the church, was the first to respond to the contractors after hearing them calling, Barden said. The machine still wouldn’t start after Hungerford put some fuel in the tank, at which point he summoned Barden. A little after, Select Board member Chris Raymond came over to lend a hand after noticing the situation on his way into a Budget Committee meeting.
“We had to get them out of the steeple,” Barden said. Initially he thought they’d have to summon the ladder truck from Peterborough’s Fire Department, but the three of them eventually figured out how to activate the machine’s manual override, which lowered the workers to the ground without having to turn on the machine. Although Barden said he was unsure how long the workers were ultimately stranded, the extraction took about 45 minutes after he arrived on the scene, he said. The painters’ boss arrived on scene shortly after they were let down, Barden said, and overall, the situation appeared to be a calm affair. “We got the lift to the ground, and then I went back into the budget meeting,” Raymond said.
On Wednesday, the painters were back at work to finish the job on ladders.