A woman and her dog were trapped inside a flooded culvert near Stratmoor Valley Park on Sept. 9, with water rising to her neck before deputies and firefighters cut through a fence and pried loose a grate to pull them both to safety.
The call came in at approximately 2:30 p.m. after a bystander reported hearing a woman shouting for help, though callers could not initially pinpoint her location, according to FOX21 News. The El Paso County Sheriff's Office said the report came into its Regional Communications Center from near the 3100 block of Glenarm Road. Deputies eventually located the woman inside Fountain Creek, trapped in the culvert as fast-moving water surged around her.
Cutting Through a Fence to Reach Her
Once deputies pinpointed her position, they cut through a fence to access the area, then worked alongside personnel from Stratmoor Hills Fire District and Security Fire Department to pull a metal grate off the culvert opening, per the sheriff's office account. Body camera footage captured the effort inside the narrow tunnel as rescuers discussed how to reach her. “We need to get somebody down there to get a rope or a harness around her,” one responder said, according to the same report from FOX21 News.
Crews ultimately brought a ladder down to her instead. “Hold on here just a little. We got the ladder coming to you,” a responder told her, per the outlet's account of the body camera video. Rescuers also asked whether anyone else was trapped alongside her in the flooded tunnel; she answered simply, “No.”
Dog Pulled Out Alongside Her
First responders safely pulled both the woman and her dog from the water, the sheriff's office said. The dog's own rescue was not fully captured on video, since deputies had to remove some of their gear before entering the water to reach the animal. One responder reassured the woman afterward that her dog was fine and standing on its own.
The sheriff's office said it withheld the woman's identity to protect her privacy, and it likewise excluded personal identifying information from the released rescue footage for the same reason. El Paso County Sheriff Joseph Roybal released a statement praising the coordinated emergency effort, thanking deputies and fire personnel from Stratmoor Hills and Security fire departments. Roybal praised first responders for working together and acting quickly, saying they put others' lives before their own, according to KDVR.
Not the First Colorado Culvert Rescue
Culvert rescues have turned up elsewhere along the Front Range in recent months. In the Denver area, South Adams County firefighters rescued a dog named Pebbles after she chased a rabbit into an 18-inch culvert and became stuck, according to CBS News Colorado. That rescue required a technical team to crawl roughly 100 feet into the pipe using confined-space techniques before Pebbles was reunited with her owners.
The Fountain Creek rescue near Stratmoor Valley Park stands out for the scale of the joint response, drawing deputies alongside crews from two separate fire departments to free a person rather than a pet. As floodwaters continue to test drainage infrastructure around El Paso County, the Sept. 9 rescue is a reminder of how quickly a culvert can turn into a trap when water rises fast.
