‘Amazing' is how SD Fire describes missing woman's rescue from storm drain in Poway

San Diego Fire Rescue and Poway Fire first responders pulled off an "amazing" rescue Monday afternoon of a woman in a storm drain near the border of those two cities.

"What she was doing in there, what drove her in there, how she came to be in there — we are unclear," San Diego Fire-Rescue battalion chief Erik Windsor said after the extraction. "It is very unusual to have someone in there."

It is very possible that she's been there for days, Windsor said.

Later in the day, at about 4:30, San Diego police confirmed the identity of the woman, saying that she was a 59-year-old woman who had first been reported missing to police on April 3. Flyers that had been posted said she was last seen March 25 near Union Street in downtown San Diego, which is where the woman and her husband live together, according to her mother-in-law.

The situation began Monday morning when San Diego detectives were in the area as part of their search for the missing woman. While they were here, they heard a woman's voice coming from the storm drain, at which time they called firefighters.

Firefighters set up a unified command center late in the morning in the 14700 block of Beeler Canyon Road, with eight fire-rescue vehicles and a couple patrol cars on the scene as well as a tripod with a rope belayed beneath it into an open manhole.

When SD Fire-Rescue arrived, they determined they needed to access the storm drain system to try to locate the victim, and then San Diego urban search & rescue team members and Poway fire crews entered the storm system. The initial search proved fruitless, however.

"Firefighters were literally inside the .. storm drain, crawling on their stomachs to try to locate the victim," Windsor said, adding later that "when we go in a confined space, we're worried about all sorts of gases, limited oxygen, what's going on in the confined space that are environmentally dangerous to them. There are also animals in those confined spaces."

Rescuers were in the process of calling in a bomb squad with robots to aid in the search, Windsor said. Meanwhile, firefighters were opening manhole covers along the storm drain's path and were ultimately able to locate her in an area uphill from where they had been searching."

Rescuers then set up another tripod over the second manhole not far away, and an ambulance stood by at the ready with medics preparing a stretcher.

After using a system of ropes and pulleys, first-responders were able to pull the victim and her rescuer to the surface. The current condition of the woman is unknown, but Windsor said she was taken to the hospital and was "undergoing lifesaving measures."

"It is very amazing that we were able to extricate her and get her going to the hospital," Windsor said.

The rescue took place in a fairly isolated stretch of road between a large residential complex and an industrial park off of Scripps Poway Parkway.

Investigators say that out of respect for the family, they are not releasing anymore information about this case at this time.

NBC 7

NBC 7