A day after acting Toronto Fire Capt. Rob Wonfor scaled a construction crane in a daring bid to rescue a woman dangling 25 storeys in the air, the firefighter says he’s “a little sore” but in good spirits.
“I’m a little tired,” Wonfor said in an interview with CP24. “It was a good workout going up there. It was a long way up.”
Wonfor, who is trained as a high-angle rescue specialist, has become something of a local hero in the past 24 hours, after rescuing a 22-year-old woman who had somehow managed to climb a construction crane before getting trapped on a narrow pulley device high above Toronto in the middle of the night.
The woman was spotted around 3:30 a.m., and it took emergency workers several hours to hatch out a plan and execute it. After scaling the crane while carrying heavy equipment, Wonfor was able to reach the woman, identified by Toronto police as 22-year-old Marisa Lazo, and lower her to the ground safely.
While the physically taxing rescue may have left Wonfor with some bruises, turns out it was only a warmup. Following the rescue, he rushed out to play goalie in a previously scheduled hockey tournament. At the arena, Wonfor received a round of applause from teammates before hitting the ice.
On Thursday morning the accolades continued at Toronto City Hall, where Toronto Mayor John Tory honoured Wonfor and the other emergency responders for their efforts in the crane rescue.
In a speech, Tory said that Wonfor, a 22-year veteran of the fire service, has a “keen sense of duty and courage, which is not unlike his colleagues and we see that every day.”
“We want you to know, and we want the people of Toronto to know that this is a small example of the public service rendered every single day by police, firefighters, paramedics, transit workers and a whole bunch of other people,” Tory said.
Wonfor said he was “voluntold” to go up on the crane Wednesday, but anyone on his crew would have been able to execute that manoeuvre.
“That’s what we do on the job, we’re here to help,” he said. “We’re not heroes, we’re here to make sure people are out of the jams they get themselves into.”
Unfortunately at the hockey game, Wonfor couldn’t “make that last save,” and his team lost 4-3.
The other team “played” on his fatigue after a busy morning, Wonfor said with a smile.
Wonfor said he has not spoken with Lazo since the rescue Wednesday morning, but “I would like to. I would like to find out her technique to get up there, because she did it without safety equipment that I had, and it’s a different feeling without that.”
On Thursday, Lazo appeared in a Toronto court on six charges of public mischief.
