Incredible moment Colorado mountain rescue workers save a HOUSE that slips off a cliff edge when semi it was being moved on jackknifes
- The entire mission to save the £32,000 house took nine hours
- Towing workers who had to bring everything back to safety feared that the building would crumble like a ‘pile of toothpicks’
Brave Colorado mountain rescuers managed to save a house that had slid off an icy cliff edge when a tractor-trailer moving it struck a knife blade.
The 13-foot-tall modular home slid over a steep cliff in the Colorado Rocky Mountains on Nov. 21 — and towing workers tasked with bringing it back to safety feared the property would crumble like a “pile of toothpicks.”
The entire mission to save the £32,000 house took nine hours of arduous back and forth – and miraculously there was minimal damage thanks to the skilled, quick-thinking towing workers.
Charlie Stubblefield, owner of Mountain Recovery, told the Top daily: ‘It was definitely top five in terms of difficulty, and that’s because you’re dealing with too big a load. It is 13 feet, 6 inches long, 16 feet wide and 60 feet long.
The 13-foot-tall modular home slid over a steep cliff in the Colorado Rocky Mountains on Nov. 21 — and towing workers tasked with bringing it back to safety feared the property would crumble like a “pile of toothpicks.”
Colorado mountain rescuers managed to save a house that had slid off an icy cliff when a semi-trailer moving it struck a blade
Stubblefield added: ‘It was never intended to be on anything other than super flat ground, and now we have it in the most extreme position, which is outside an embankment where a man can’t even stand on it. It’s a 45 degree angle or better.’
The ordeal began when the semi-trailers carrying the dismantled house struggled to travel the final stretch of a dirt road along Colorado Highway 9. As a result, they called the towing company.
Mountain Recovery helped two semi-finals get halfway up the hill before one of the drivers decided to cover the rest of the way under their own power – with unreliable truck chains.
Despite a warning from Mountain Recovery’s towing service, the driver continued driving, causing the house to slide down.
Stubblefield said: ‘We assume he missed a gear because if you miss a gear you have to stop when you have that much load.
“He came to a stop halfway down the slope and slid backwards, causing the modular home to slide off the edge.”
They could not use a crane because the mountain road was too narrow.
The ordeal began when semi-trailers carrying the dismantled house struggled to make the final stretch of a dirt road along Colorado Highway 9. As a result, they called the towing company
The house is seen as attached to a semi-trailer
The entire mission to save the £32,000 house took nine hours of arduous back and forth – and miraculously there was minimal damage thanks to the skilled, quick-thinking towing workers
Instead, the towing company used rotating booms to get the right angles on the slide house so it could be safely raised from the mountainside.
Stubblefield added: “All those operators and all those winches had to be in sync so that the load stays distributed and doesn’t just go to one of the oars or one of the belts.
‘So it really is a coordinated dance. They had to be perfectly synchronized so that each point touching the house applied equal pressure.
“The amazing thing was that when it went off, it didn’t sustain much damage. It kept some alive.
“But the modular home had a lot of big windows, sliding doors, things like that.
“None of them were broken when they hit the hole. And none were broken when it came out.”