Crime & Safety
Roofer Suffers Back Injury in Fall at Target Store
Ladder truck used to swing strapped-in man to safety.
A roofer working at the Target store in Novato took a wrong step Wednesday and fell about 12 feet to a lower portion of the roof, causing a back injury, a source at the Novato Fire District said.
The man, who was in his late 30s or early 40s, was placed on a wire backboard and lifted to safety with the use of a ladder truck, Novato Fire Captain Dmitri Menzel said.
The man was taken to Novato Community Hospital with complaints of back pain, but it was unknown what specific injuries he had, Menzel said.
Find out what's happening in Novatowith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The man was an employee of Dri Commercial Roofing
Services and there were six workers on the roof at the time of the incident.
An emergency call was made at 2:56 p.m. about a man who had fallen from a roof, but first responders found that he'd fallen from the top level of the roof to a lower level near the northwest corner of the Target building (above the former garden center). Menzel said the lower roof area was about 75 feet long and about 10 feet wide and still about 15-20 feet from the sidewalk level.
Find out what's happening in Novatowith free, real-time updates from Patch.
"The workers said he was walking backward and simply fell off," Menzel said. "He was conscious and coherent, just in a lot of pain."
Crew members got to the roof with ladders and through an interior access hole, he said. They took precautions for a spinal injury and placed the man on a backboard, then strapped him into the stoke basket after the ladder truck from Station 62 (Atherton Avenue) arrived at the site. The ladder truck operator then swung the basket to the ground level and the injured man was taken a half mile to the hospital.
Extrication took about 30 minutes and was complete at 3:26 p.m.
Did you take photos of this rescue? You can upload them directly to this story if you're logged into Novato Patch. Or you can e-mail them to the site editor at brent.ainsworth@patch.com.
— Bay City News Service contributed to this report.
Stay Patched in! Follow Novato Patch on Twitter | Like Novato Patch on Facebook | Sign up for the daily e-mail with links to the latest news.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
