Colorado teen rescued after falling 30 feet into abandoned missile silo: “Endless tunnels of danger”

By Austen Erblat

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    ARAPAHOE COUNTY, Colorado (KCNC) — A Colorado teen has been rescued from an abandoned missile silo after falling 30 feet inside early Sunday morning.

That teen is seriously injured, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, after responders from several agencies were at the silo near 82000 East County Road 22. That silo is near the town of Deer Trail, about 50 miles east of Denver.

The sheriff’s office says the teen fell into that silo around 3:30 a.m. and now all eight of them are safely outside. Rescue teams were able to get into that silo.

Deer Trail Fire Chief Rich Loveless said he and crews from his department arrived in the night and called in additional resources to assist in a technical rescue.

He says the inherent dangers involved in the rescue meant they needed other agencies to assist with a “high-angle rescue,” which involves lowering crews with ropes and other climbing gear and hoisting victims up the same way.

The operation was further complicated by poor radio signals once crews got underground into the silo. It meant there was a lot of shouting to communicate. At one point, crews were out of contact for about 20 minutes.

Loveless said his department has trained for rescues like this but never did anything like it before Sunday. From their arrival at the scene to the eventual rescue, the operation took about six hours.

Once the operation was all wrapped up, he said he felt a “big sigh of relief because we knew no one else was down there.”

Sable Altura Fire Rescue Chief Rich Solomon described the silo complex as an “underground city that’s been utterly destroyed and abandoned inside.”

It was his first time inside the complex.

“We responded knowing we’d be in for a difficult rescue,” he said. “Inside the facility, it’s cave darkness, so there’s no light unless you bring it with you. There’s only the person next to you that you can hear.”

He described sitting water, twisted and rusted metal and collapsed concrete.

“It’s seemingly endless tunnels of danger,” he said. “There are some massive spaces and there’s some very small spaces.”

Social media posts going back about 10 years show discussions about people venturing into the silo or trying unsuccessfully, describing different locations and sometimes posting photos from what appears to be the inside of that silo. A photo posted by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office shows what appears to be graffiti on the silo entrance.

According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the silo was one of six silos in eastern Colorado that housed the Titan I intercontinental ballistic missiles. The 98-foot-long missile was fueled by kerosene and liquid oxygen and was designed to carry nuclear warheads.

CDPHE says some of the other silos contain a number of public health hazards such as petroleum, radiation, paint and several other chemicals, but a 2009 site inspection of the silo near Deer Trail showed that only polychlorinated biphenols in the lagoon wastes were still an issue at the time.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers removed the impacted soil in 2013 and no further action was needed, according to a 2013 report, CDPHE said.

A fence surrounds the area of an underground missile silo complex near Deer Trail, Colorado. In the early morning hours of Sunday, May 5, 2024, a group of teens squeezed through a gap in the fence to gain access to that complex and one of them became seriously injured when they fell approximately 30 feet, according to police and fire officials.

Loveless said there’s fencing all around the area and the teens appeared to have squeezed through an approximately 12-inch gap to gain access to the silos.

CBS News Colorado reached out to the sheriff’s office for the ages and other information about the teens, but did not hear back as of Sunday afternoon.

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