SAN DIEGO (CNS) – Firefighters Friday came to the rescue of a worker who fell about 20 feet into an underground water-storage tank at a University City office building, breaking his leg.

The man had been helping recoat the inside of the buried cistern in the 8900 block of University Center Lane and was climbing a ladder to get out through a manhole when he slipped and plunged back in about 11 a.m., according to the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.

Emergency personnel went down into the tank, put a splint on the worker’s fractured limb, secured him to a backboard and hoisted him out, SDFRD spokesman Lee Swanson said. The process took a little over an hour.

Medics took the victim, who remained conscious and alert throughout the ordeal, to Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla.

The tank is part of a fire-suppression system that serves the building, according to Swanson.