'Santa' Stuck 60 Feet Above Street Level Rescued By Firefighters In Connecticut

NORWALK, CT — Firefighters who were kept busy this weekend responding to two fires, thought that they would have a slow night Saturday as they displayed their apparatus to families with children at a holiday event.

But the jovial atmosphere quickly changed, and they were called into action once again.

"It was definitely not part of what I was expecting for the evening," Lt. Scott Rywolt said. "I just thought we were going to be taking kids on and off the fire engine, as just a goodwill gesture. I had no idea that there was going to be rapelling going on."

"When it was happening, I was like, 'Oh, this is cool, you know?' he recalled. "Wow, this is neat."

Dozens of spectators were watching in awe at around 6:30 p.m. as a man dressed in a Santa Claus suit rappelled down "The side of a 13-story building on Washington Street, followed by another man dressed as "The Grinch."

The spotlight was on the building and event organizers were "amping it up," Rywolt said, adding, "They're cheering them on."

Then "Santa" stopped in the middle, and then "The Grinch" started coming down.

"I figure, okay it's going be like every TV show you've ever seen, all the Christmas shows when the bad guy starts to win, and then the good guy all of a sudden regains his composure, and comes down and ends up beating 'The Grinch'," Rywolt said. "But it didn't happen that way."

"The Grinch" made it down, but "Santa" was jammed up.

Rywolt surmised that his beard became tangled in his equipment, preventing him from going any further.

He remembers thinking how it was affecting the children in the audience.

"What are they thinking?" he asked himself. "Especially when [they] saw Santa's beard and hat fall. You started hearing people in the crowd, like, 'Oh my, God.'"

The event's organizers moved forward like the dilemma was part of the show, "trying to take the kids away from the situation that was happening" until the fire department could make the rescue, according to Rywolt.

Also, sensing the danger, some in the crowd started to call out, "Save 'Santa,'" he said.

Rywolt immediately began looking for someone to let him into the building, and found a woman who worked there, who asked, "Oh, are you going to say, 'Santa'?," he added.

She ended up letting the crew in the building and the team got to work, and an assignment team was called in just in case.

The man, who has not been identified, was brought in through a window on the 6th floor where a safety line was attached and anchored to the inside of the building.

"By the time the assignment got on scene, which was only a minute or two, we had 'Santa in,' and everything was all good," Rywolt said. "We looked good, but it was definitely something I wasn't expecting to be doing."

Neither the man, nor any firefighters, were injured in the rescue.

The fire department had saved the day, not 'Santa.'

It took about 13 firefighters to rescue him, according to union officials.

Rywolt said it was a core group of himself and three firefighters, including Peter Chila, Tim Izzo, and Rocco Bocchetta.

Local 830 union officials described the rescue as "a busy evening" for firefighters, who were activated again early Sunday morning for a fire at a multi-family house.

When Rywolt and the team of rescuers came down from the building, he had a feeling that the story was going to "grow legs."

When he got home, it was all over Facebook.

"People from the event were posting videos of the whole thing happening," he said. "It was interesting; it was one of those things after working all night at a fire, and then you go down and do this little touch-a-truck thing that's just supposed to be kind of not so involved."

"But we're always ready for anything," Rywolt said.