/ 12 May 2006

Crane needed to move 280kg French man

A 280kg man had to be removed from his home by a crane because he could no longer leave the apartment through the door, an official said on Friday.

In an operation that took three hours to complete and involved 12 firefighters, the man was taken out of his apartment through a window and transported by a van to Strasbourg’s University Hospital for treatment, fire chief Pierre-Jean Cheze said in an comments broadcast on BleuAlsace Radio.

The man lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building in the Strasbourg suburb of Illkirch and wanted to leave for a scheduled doctor’s appointment on Thursday afternoon when he realised he could no longer fit through the door and called the fire department, Cheze said.

”For a man of his size, it was naturally very difficult to get out on his own,” Cheze told BleuAlsace Radio. — Sapa-AP