Man Fights For Life After Fall At Abandoned US Steel Plant

JOLIET, IL — A 37-year-old Joliet man suffered life-threatening injuries Friday when he fell about 30 feet inside the abandoned U.S. Steel property, Joliet police announced.

The man suffered serious injuries, and it took about two hours before Joliet police and firefighters found him.

At that moment, a Joliet Fire Department ambulance rushed him to St. Joe's hospital.

Joliet Fire Department Battalion Chief Jim Ryan told Patch the man was inside a locked building and fell from what Ryan believed was an old steel mill catwalk.

The man kept yelling for help, and that's how authorities eventually found him, Ryan said. Before finding him, police and firefighters had to canvass an area roughly the size of an entire city block, Ryan said. The old U.S. Steel property, with several buildings, encompasses nearly 40 acres along Collins Street and bordering Ohio Street.

According to Joliet police spokesman Dwayne English, the following events happened:

At 8:32 a.m. officers and ambulance crews were sent to the Joliet Iron Works Site at 75 Columbia Street because a man was injured from a fall somewhere on the site.

The information was reported by someone not on the scene who had received a call from the victim.

Several officers and Joliet Fire Department members could not locate the injured person.

A drone was also deployed.

Following an extensive search lasting for almost two hours, police found the 37-year-old man in an abandoned steel mill building in the 900 block of Collins Street.

The man fell approximately 30 feet from a surface above. The events leading up to the fall are unknown at this time, English said.

Fire officials said the man was conscious and alert as he was being transported by ambulance.