Man Had to Have Grand Rapids FD Rescue Him From Laundry Chute

Not going to lie, when I first read this story, I thought, “man, that could totally have happened to me.” Only because anytime I see the chute in any hotel hallway, I have this urge to jump in and ride it down, like they do in action and spy movies. Now I know that it doesn’t end with my dropping in a fluffy basket of towels and sheets like in the movies. Which now that I think about all that, it’s kind of gross to think I’d plop into a bunch of other people’s dirty sheets.

Ok, here’s the story.  WOODTV reports that the Grand Rapids Fire Department was called to the Grand River Hotel which is on Ann Street, right next to US-131 around 2:15 pm Monday afternoon because there was a guy who was stuck in the laundry chute. When they go there, they realized he went down the chute feet first and was stuck in there. They could communicate with him, so they knew he wasn’t seriously injured. That’s when WOODTV says firemen decided to lower a harness down to him so they could just pull him out.

They say it was still a delicate rescue, but they didn’t have to dismantle the laundry chute or anything and that the stuck guy only received cuts and scrapes from his ordeal. They had him freed, at least from the laundry chute, just after 3 pm.

WOODTV didn’t have many more details from the scene, other than apparently the guy jumped into the laundry chute after a disturbance at the hotel. So it’s unclear whether or not the police took him to jail, or if he was kicked out of the hotel afterward. Or exactly what the disturbance was that sent the man down the laundry chute, to begin with... But now we do know, that it doesn’t happen like in the movie. You will get stuck and the fire department will have to come to get you. And then if you’re running from bad guys, like in the movies, they’ll be waiting for you to get pulled out.