Teen flying a drone helps 2 people trapped in a car in a flooded sinkhole

A teen in a rural Colorado town had been flying his drone to capture breathtaking views of the flood waters unleashed by recent downpours when he made a startling discovery on Saturday morning.

Josh Logue, 18, was flying the drone from his driveway when he noticed a dark spot on a road at the foot of a bridge crossing a canal just two miles from his home in Brighton, a suburban town about thirty miles south. northwest of Denver. He went in to take a closer look.

It was a sinkhole. Inside, an SUV lay on its roof, wheels visible from the air. With help from a neighbor, Mr. Logue sought help for the two people trapped in the vehicle in the canal’s rising waters — a 66-year-old man and a 61-year-old woman in a Jeep Grand Cherokee, authorities later confirmed.

Firefighters from the Brighton Fire Rescue District rescued the people inside, who were taken to a hospital, said Colin Brunt, the battalion chief who was on scene that morning.

After Mr. Logue saw the vehicle, he and a neighbor, Ryan Nuanes, ran to the sinkhole and realized the two people needed help.

“So we’re going down. The horn sounds and the car is flooded,” said Mr. Logue Monday in a telephone interview.

The wailing horn indicated the accident was recent, said Mr Nuanes, 46, who is assistant chief at the Denver Fire Department. They called 911.

Then a male voice screamed from the wrecked SUV

“He tells us he only has about six inches of breathing room,” Mr Nuanes said in an interview, adding that the man told him he had been in the hole for about 15 minutes. Mr. Nuanes had been at Mr. Logue’s house for a garage sale when the sinkhole was noticed.

Firefighters arrived and began cutting through the vehicle’s metal undercarriage to access the people inside. But that effort would take a long time and crews were concerned that the hole, which was at least six feet deep and about 10 feet wide, would remain full of water, Mr. Brunt said.

To expedite the rescue, crews hooked the jeep to a pickup truck and rolled it over to allow access to one of its doors, Mr. Brunt said. The door was intact enough for rescuers to open it and free those inside.

Gabriel Moltrer, a trooper with the Colorado State Patrol’s public affairs bureau, said in an email that the 66-year-old driver was “seriously injured” and reported no injuries to the passenger.

Mr Moltrer said he could not comment on the driver’s injury, but according to Mr Brunt, both occupants walked away from the scene of the accident on their own and were taken to hospital in ambulances. The driver and passenger have not been identified, but they are residents of nearby Keenesburg, Mr Moltrer said.

The sinkhole had formed under the vehicle as it traveled down the road, Mr Moltrer added.

Mr Brunt said the roadway where the jeep sank sees little traffic and the sinkhole was not clearly visible from the ground if not a few feet away.

“That’s another godsend from the kid with the drone,” Mr. Brunt said. “I don’t know how long these people would have been there if he hadn’t let that drone fly there.”