Firefighters used a rope rescue to lower a patient to safety on the 3000 block of NE 45th Street on Monday afternoon near University Village. The patient was lowered safely to the ground, according to the Seattle Fire Dept.
The department shared the update in a post on X, describing the incident as a rope rescue that safely lowered the patient, according to the Seattle Fire Dept.
The patient was safely on the ground after the rope rescue.
The address lines up with 3020 NE 45th St., the former Safeway and Burgermaster site that is now a sprawling 4-acre construction zone. Compass Construction is the general contractor there. Developers Quarterra and MacNaughton broke ground on the project on August 18, 2025, with plans calling for nearly 1 million square feet of space, 796 apartment units, and ground-floor retail, with completion targeted for late 2028, per a report from the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.
Stokes Baskets in Technical Rescues
A Stokes basket is a rigid, contoured stretcher built specifically to immobilize and protect patients during high-angle, vertical, or rope-assisted extractions, according to Seattle Fire's own Fireline blog.
Seattle Fire's heavy technical rescue work is typically led by Rescue 1, a specialized company stationed at Fire Station 14 in SoDo and equipped for complex rope and trench rescues across the city.
Not the First Time SFD Has Lowered a Patient This Way
Monday's operation follows a string of similar technical rescues carried out by Seattle Fire in recent years. In April 2025, crews performed a comparable construction-site extraction behind Capitol Hill's Chop Suey on E. Union Street, using an aerial ladder and a Stokes basket to lower an injured worker to the ground, according to KIRO 7.
It remains unclear what led to Monday's emergency, whether the patient was a construction worker or someone else on site, and whether state workplace safety regulators have been notified. Seattle Fire's post did not address those questions, and it is not known whether work at the redevelopment site was paused following the rescue.
