Rescuers saved the life of a Manhattan man and a Florida woman vacationing in Colorado after they were swept by icy water into a drainage tunnel yesterday, authorities said.
“It could have been much worse,” said Tod Michael Kendrick, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department in Aspen.
“There wasn’t a lot of air in the tunnel.”
New Yorker Sandy Krohn, 27, got sucked 175 feet into the culvert after he and his friend Heidi Baum, 50, of Miami, went after their dog, which fell in, just before 9 a.m.
Krohn and Baum had been hiking on a trail just west of Aspen with the black Labrador, named “Glover.”
The 4-foot-high culvert held about 3 feet of frigid water that ran off from a nearby mountain.
Another hiker saw what happened and called 911.
About 60 rescuers who were about to march in Aspen’s July Fourth parade responded. They had to hike a quarter-mile up the trail to reach the pair, before pulling them out with a rope.
Krohn and Baum were taken to Aspen Valley Hospital to be treated for hypothermia.
With Post Wire Services