Man Rescued After 5+ Hours in Septic Tank

AN 80-YR.-OLD MAN WAS RESCUED BY HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO, firefighters yesterday after falling into a septic tank.  He was trapped in the muck for over two hours until a neighbor, hearing a dog barking vigorously by the hole, came to investigate and found him.  The responding units set up immediate rescue procedures, calling in the county Urban Search and Rescue team, as well as bringing in a special heating unit to blow warm air into the cavity.  The rescue operation took an additional three hours before they successfully got the victim, Paul Paff out of the tank.

Cincinnati Enquirer / Coleman photo

The Cincinnati Enquirer explains how it happened:

While mowing the lawn Tuesday, Paff said he noticed a small opening in the grass in his backyard by the private septic tank that’s been there for 60 years.

He went closer to investigate about 2 p.m. – and discovered the hard way that four inches of concrete on top of the septic tank had apparently deteriorated. He fell in feet first.  “I had seen this square hole. I knew it was above the septic tank and looked up and was trying to look into it and I fell into it,” he recalled. “The cement was crumbling in the bottom. It disintigrated. It was shot. I went down in the dirt.”

His shoes and feet were stuck in the mud. Dirt fell down around him up to his knees. He compared being in the tank to standing in a closet that was about 9 feet tall and three feet wide.

“My body was in water three feet deep,” he said.  He managed to step out of his shoes and pull them up so he could set them on the grass outside the tank. His hope was that someone would see them and help him. “I could stand up but I couldn’t get out,” he said. “I sat on top of the dirt.”

While waiting, he would call for help about every 10 minutes.  But after a couple of hours he was beginning to get a little bit panicky as the water cold and he was getting chilled.  Then Murphy, a neighbor’s dog found him and the process of getting help began.

WKRC-TV Ch.12 Cincinnati tells what happened:

Read the full story in the Enquirer HERE.