Fort Worth man hospitalized after falling into abandoned grain silo

A man is in serious condition at the hospital after Fort Worth Fire Department said he fell into an abandoned grain silo.

According to the Fort Worth Fire Department, emergency crews were called to 1937 South Main Street at about 11:45 p.m. on Wednesday and immediately called for a high-angle rescue response.

"It's one of those things that we train for quite a bit, but we don't get to utilize those things in real-world scenarios that often," said Craig Trojacek, the spokesperson for Fort Worth Fire Department.

Firefighters said when crews arrived, they found a man who had fallen more than 10 feet inside an abandoned grain silo.

Rescuers had a difficult time getting to the man because he was located several stories up inside the structure, but they were able to treat him above ground at the location where he was found, firefighters said.

Trojacek said abandoned buildings are dangerous because staircases may be missing or damaged. He said floors may also have gaping holes or rotted through.

"There’s challenges that come with these abandoned buildings. I mean, it's not just the structures that could be, you know, in disrepair, you've got a lot of trash, you've got a lot of drug paraphernalia, dirty needles, wild animals that are living in there," said Trojacek regarding abandoned buildings in general.

Glen E. Ellman/FWFD

According to police, the Fort Worth Fire Department's technical rescue teams rescued the man using a rope system. It took them more than two hours to rescue him.

The fire department said the man was lowered from a fifth-story window, and from there, he was lowered down by crews using a ladder truck.

Once the man was lowered to ground level, he was transported to an area hospital, police said.

The man’s identity has not been released at this time, and his current condition is unknown.

It's unknown why he was inside the unused building at the time. The Fort Worth Police Department said the person who called for help was with the injured man.

Trojacek didn't have an exact number of how many times they've been called to those silos but said it's not nearly as much as the location two miles south in the 3700 block of Alice Street.

“Compared to that specific silo is less frequent here, but anytime you kind of start seeing some incidents that are taking place, people are getting inside, it just kind of opens up opportunity for other people inside to take that risk as well," he said.

A demolition equipment sits at the site which will be demolished according to the city. In 2016, a teenager died after falling from one of the silos located on Alice St.

“From a firefighter's perspective, we don't like abandoned buildings, but that's that's not my call to come back and say that they need to be torn down. That's just from a response standpoint, for another risk associated with our response," said Trojacek. "You don't want to lose your history, but when it gets to the point that there could be possible lives at stake because of that, there's some tough decisions that need to be made."