Man climbs on a crane to commit suicide

Chongzuo, China: A man was rescued from attempting to commit suicide by jumping from a tower crane on Tuesday at a construction site in the south Chinese city of Chongzuo, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The man was found sitting on the tip of the crane's arm when firefighters arrived. His friend, who failed to convince him not to climb the crane, had called 119. He was talking to him on his cell phone at the base of the crane when fire fighters arrived.

Fire fighters inflated a life-saving air-cushion and placed it under the crane in case the man decided to jump. They asked the friend to keep on the phone with the man as to reassure and calm him down.

"We told him to use his local dialect," said a fire fighter on scene. "To say that we have all these people here for one thing only, that is to make sure he is safe."

Eventually a firefighter climbed across the forty-meter-long arm and successfully attached a safety harness to the man.

Finally persuaded to descend, the man found himself too weak to climb down as he had been under the sweltering sun for more than an hour. Firefighters used a cable car to take him to the crane's control room. After being taken down in the cableway bucket, the man was taken to the hospital. The whole process took nearly three hours.