Rescuers free teen trapped in vault

Firefighters find code to open door at abandoned bank

Instead of breaking out metal cutters, torches and extrication tools to free a boy trapped in a bank vault Wednesday afternoon, Hollywood firefighters tracked down the secret code needed to open the massive steel door.

Rescuers worked the phones, calling “a chain of people” to figure out the combination for the vault, Division Chief Chris Del Campo said after the successful rescue at an abandoned Bank of America.

The 17-year-old was freed in “the least dynamic way possible,” Del Campo said. The boy had spent about two hours in the 14-foot by 14-foot vault with two-foot thick concrete walls.

Two boys were in the vacant building on the the southwest corner of State

Road 7 and Washington Street when somehow the vault door closed with one of them inside, Del Campo said.

“Their stories are conflicting about how the door closed behind him,” he said. “They were probably just doing kid stuff and exploring the building.”

It will be up to police to investigate what the boys were doing there and how one of them got trapped, Del Campo said.

“That’s not our job to figure out how he got there,” he said. “We just take care of the rescue and leave the scene.”

The trapped boy’s friend called 911 at about 3 p.m. His pal already had been locked in the vault with concrete walls that were two-feet thick for about 90 minutes before he made the emergency call, fire officials said.

Rather than start dismantling the iron door, rescuers started making calls in search of the combination.

“I don’t have information as to how they ultimately got the number,” Del Campo said.

It was a “convoluted” process that went through “a chain of people,” he said.