COUNCIL BLUFFS — As temperatures dipped below zero Saturday night, a 24-year-old Council Bluffs woman found herself trapped outside in a drainage tube.
Two bystanders spotted the woman shortly after 4:30 p.m. Sunday in the 500 block of North Sixth Street.
Police said Melissa Ramirez told them she was walking along a retaining wall when she accidentally fell into the drainage tube opening.
Council Bluffs Police Sgt. Dave Dawson said the drainage tube is about 19 inches in diameter and 5 or 6 feet deep.
Ramirez suffered minor scrapes and severe hypothermia, said Assistant Council Bluffs Fire Chief Matt Thomas. Police said she was in critical condition when taken to Mercy Hospital.
"She was incoherent but conscious," Thomas said.
She wasn't wearing pants when bystanders found her, Dawson said. It's not unusual for victims of hypothermia to remove clothing.
"When they start to go into shock, they feel like they're really hot and sweating, and they take their clothes off," he said. "We suspect that is what happened in this case."
Dawson said investigators have determined there was no foul play.
"She said she was by herself and nobody had done anything to her previously," Dawson said. "She has no idea when it happened, but she slipped and fell."
The hole is a raised drain that collects water running down the hillside behind the retaining wall, said Public Works Operations Director Pat Miller.
The hole would normally be covered by a raised metal grate, but Miller said it was likely stolen for scrap metal.
Grate thefts are nothing new in Council Bluffs and Omaha.
"We have had a rash of that going for the past several months, if not the last couple of years, since scrap metal prices went up," Miller said.
"People have stolen manhole lids out of the streets and storm grates. Anything they can get their hands on and throw into a truck, they try to take it."
Miller urged people to report any missing grates, manhole covers or sewer covers.
"My message to the thieves would be to stop doing this," he said. "You are endangering people's lives."
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