Cando woman survives three-storey fall down well

Chrissy Gamble says she remembers taking a three-storey fall like it was happening in slow motion.

Gamble was being lowered down a well on a ladder hooked to the ball of a pickup truck.

She found herself in that scenario when water suddenly stopped flowing during her husband’s shower on Sept. 10 at the family’s home in Cando, Sask.

She went down once to retrieve the well pump, then had to return it once she determined the pump wasn’t the source of the problem.

That was when the rope detached from the truck, sending her on a 25-metre fall.

“It was not really in slow-motion when I went down,” she said during an interview with Saskatchewan Afternoon. “It was pretty quick.”

Breaking her leg upon landing wasn’t her main concern.

Gamble had a screwdriver in her pocket so she could reattach the pump at the bottom of the well.

“The screwdriver, when I fell, ripped me from hip to hip,” she said.

“I didn’t actually have pain because I went into survival mode. I was probably in shock and the water was really cold, so I didn’t feel anything.”

Laying in waist-deep water, Gamble had to wait more than three hours before emergency crews could arrive and retrieve her with the help of a harness.

Gamble later joked about the incident, saying that she offered to go down the well rather than her husband or her father-in-law.

“I took one for the team,” she said.