Christine Keilback went out to a movie on Saturday, but the real drama happened after, when she got home.
You could say the evening went in a hole new direction.
Keilback’s friends Lynda and Jeff Regan pulled up around 9 p.m. to drop her off at her house on Lipton Street, in Winnipeg’s Wolseley area.
She got out of the passenger side, took a couple of steps “and they said I was gone,” Keilback told CBC News Monday morning.
The Regans, still inside the vehicle, couldn’t see Keilback anymore. They thought she tripped and fell.
“When they came around, it was quite surprising to find my head and shoulders just above the ground. The ground had just given away very fast. I have no recollection of the fall. It just happened very quickly,” Keilback said.
Jeff immediately ran to find something for Keilback to hang on to. He returned with a broom and a shovel that could span the gap and give her a brace to hook her arms around.
Keilback tried to boost herself out, but every foothold immediately crumbled away.
“So that at that point we said, OK, we gotta call 911, because I don’t want any further erosion of the dirt beneath me,” she said.
Her rescuers from the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service arrived within 10 minutes.
“They were so professional and they were so reassuring and kind, and I felt immediately like everything was under control,” Keilback said, routinely laughing at the absurdity of the incident.
She wasn’t hurt or scared, but more “mildly amused,” she said.
“If you can see the pictures, I mean, I was laughing. If I had hurt my ankle or hurt my leg or something happened, I’m sure it would have been a little more shocking than what it was.”
But she was also very lucky. Keilback didn’t realize until the firefighters removed it that a jagged piece of metal was sticking out of the soil behind her.
“There was also an old pipe in front of me, about the level of my abdomen, so I could have hit that on the way down,” she said.
A city spokesperson told CBC News on Monday the rescuers were from the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service’s technical rescue task force.
They slung some strapping under Keilback’s arms to support her before taking a few minutes to consider the best approach to getting her out.
In her interview, Keilback repeatedly praised the crew, saying they included her in discussions every step of the way.
Ultimately, they decided to put up a frame and winch to lift her. Keilback was given a harness and coached on how to put it on, “because there’s no way they could get in to do it,” she said.
Getting the straps under her legs meant she had to dip her face below ground level, which was a little disconcerting, she said.
“But I knew that if they had to pull me out just by the waist …. that would create an injury, so I was pretty motivated to get the leg straps on.”
She was raised until she could find a firm foothold and climb the remaining way.
It was about 40 minutes from the time she dropped into the hole until she was back on solid ground.
Keilback called it a sinkhole but a city spokesperson, in an email, said it appears to be a catchbasin missing the manhole cover, “but the investigation is ongoing.”
“The area has been secured, and permanent repairs will be completed as soon as possible,” the email said.
Far from fuming about her experience, Keilback is actually grateful for the opportunity to see the “amazing” work of the WFPS crew close up.
“It was a bizarre but very good experience, in that I was well cared for … but I’d rather not fall into sinkhole again,” she said.
“It’s cold down there, I gotta tell you.”
Keilback joked she hopes people don’t think they’re going to start falling through their boulevards now. But she is glad it wasn’t a child or an animal that found the one she fell in.
“I was still above the ground when I fell into. Maybe somebody else wouldn’t have been.”
While Alice in Wonderland would have been on the nose, it wasn’t the movie Keilback happened to see that evening.
It was The Christophers, a dark comedy.
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