Ho! Ho! … Uh-Oh! Girl Locked Out Of Grandparents’ House Gets Stuck In Chimney

Amber Morgan just figured she was being clever Tuesday when she tried crawling down her grandparents’ chimney to unlock the front door.

A friend had accidentally locked them out of the house about 3 p.m., and they didn’t want to wait for Amber’s grandparents to return.

The chimney seemed like a good idea.

But an hour later, Amber had changed her mind. Firefighters had to rescue the 12-year-old, who was stuck 7 feet down the chimney shaft.

“I thought I was going to be stuck there forever,” said Amber, her feet firmly on the ground in the front yard of the home at 6812 Johannsen.

She was covered in soot.

“I was stupid,” she said.

Except for her pride, Amber said she was uninjured.

Firefighters from Spokane County Fire District 9 were called to the home off Nine Mile Road about 3:15 p.m. when her friend ran across the street and called 911.

“We couldn’t get her out from below,” said Fire District 9 Lt. Bill Dean. The wrought iron gate at the bottom of the chimney is what kept Amber from getting inside the house.

Rescue workers spent about an hour setting up a pulley system with ladders and ropes to lift her out in a harness.

“She was a little bit embarrassed,” Dean said. “She’s very fortunate.”

The adventure started when Amber and her friend climbed up the flower trellis and onto the roof. Then her friend turned back.

Amber crawled down the chimney and started to slip. She couldn’t crawl back up, so she kept going. She slipped again, then let go of the chimney walls and fell about 7 feet, landing on the iron grate, she said.

Her grandfather, Sid Breckenridge, was none too pleased with the stunt.

He’d left Amber and her friend alone earlier in the day and came home to firefighters pulling his granddaughter out of his chimney.

“I told her to just go in and clean up,” he said.

When asked what he thought was the lesson learned from Tuesday’s emergency, Breckenridge said, “Who knows?”

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