A homeless man needed to be rescued by Butler firefighters from the Connoquenessing Creek Friday afternoon near the railroad tracks near South Cliff Street. Firefighters fashioned a loop from elastic webbing to support the man.

A homeless man, tired and soaking wet, was rescued Friday after he took an accidental plunge into Connoquenessing Creek in Butler.

The man, believed to be in his 60s, was enjoying a cigarette near the railroad tracks on South Cliff Street around noon when trouble befell him, authorities said.

City police did not respond and the man's name was not released.

An employee at nearby Waterbec Autobody saw the man slide down the hillside and a concrete wall, and called 911.

Moments earlier, the man had been seated on a patch of loose gravel that shifted. Momentum and gravity did the rest.

“He was just sitting there with his back packs and then he started sliding down on his belly,” said the witness, who did not want to give his name. “He slid the whole way down into the creek. His head was just out of the water.”

The Butler Fire Department got the rescue call and went to work.

“We saw him standing in the water at the bottom of the wall,” said Butler Fire Capt. Kevin McAfee.

While he was only in knee-deep water, he was trapped. Not far away, toward the middle of the creek, the water is 7 to 8 feet deep.

“There was no way he could get out himself,” McAfee said, “because he seemed fairly unsteady to begin with and the fact that the (steep and angled) wall was kind of slimy.”

<iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fbutlereaglenews%2Fvideos%2F974499152752084%2F&show_text=0&width=720" width="720" height="450" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" allowFullScreen="true"></iframe>A crew of firefighters came up with an impromptu rescue plan. One firefighter eased his way down the wall to the man.“(The firefighter) tried to bring him up just by holding his hand and giving him support to bring him out,” McAfee said. “But (the man) continued to slip back down into the water.”At least one of those times, he tumbled straight backward.The crew dipped into its tool box and found some heavy-duty elastic webbing.“We got a piece of webbing and fashioned a loop,” McAfee said, “and got it around his shoulder and armpits to keep him from sliding back.”After several failed attempts, firefighters eventually pulled the man from the water using the webbing.“We got him up to the edge of the (railroad) bridge and let him sit there to catch his breath a few minutes,” McAfee said.In time, he was back on top of the hillside, safe.The man had a couple of minor scrapes on his legs, but he was otherwise uninjured. He refused medical treatment.Firefighters let him go on his way, but not before they retrieved his possessions — two backpacks, a folding chair and a pillow — that had fallen in and around the creek with him.