TORONTO

Donald Lee heard the faint cries for help coming through the cracks of the narrow alleyway beside his home and couldn’t believe it when he saw a man wedged in the eight-inch crevice between the two buildings.

Lee, 77, and his wife live at 123 Sherbourne St. — formerly Tom’s Chinese-Canadian restaurant, which he ran before the couple retired — just south of Queen St. E.

It was about 8 p.m. Tuesday when he heard the cries for help from the man who had been stuck in the confined space for about five hours and was too weak to get out.

Firefighters broke through a brick wall in Lee’s kitchen and freed the man around 11 p.m.

Now, the pensioner faces what he fears will be a hefty repair bill for the damage to his home that his insurance won’t cover.

“My insurance is for fire only,” said Lee in Toisan, a Chinese dialect. “But they won’t cover the damage. How much the damage is, I don’t know. I wouldn’t let them in to damage my kitchen, but then police told me if I didn’t let them, they would charge me. He told me I would have to pay for the damages.”

The man, believed to be in his 30s, told rescuers he fell from a nearby roof and got stuck between the buildings about five hours earlier, said Toronto Paramedic Services spokesman John Migliore.

Toronto Fire Capt. Michael Westwood said the man was stuck in a space that was only about 20 centimetres — or eight inches — wide, and he was dehydrated and had reduced circulation, despite firefighters trying to keep him hydrated by passing him bottles of water.

“His head was sideways, his body was wedged in there really tight,” said Westwood.

“I’ve been on the job for 32 years and at same we had that going on at 123 Sherbourne, we also an identical call at 105 Victoria St., but it turned out it was two homeless guys sleeping in an alleyway.”

“We have done numerous confined space rescues — those are usually at construction sites — but getting wedged between two buildings is an odd one,” he added.

Lee suspects the unidentified man climbed his fire escape. If that was the case, he doesn’t know why he was up there in the first place.

“He was a big guy and this was a small space. He was saying, ‘Help me!’ and I looked and saw this guy there,” he said. “There were seven or eight fire trucks, ambulance and police cars here. They tried to pull him up using a rope, but it didn’t work. So they had to kick down my wall.”

The man was taken to hospital with minor injuries, said Westwood, who did not have an update on his condition Wednesday.

City spokesman Wynna Brown said the property owner should submit a claim with his own insurer and failing that, he can file a claim for damages with the city.

“The city is aware of this issue, and investigating any other available avenues that may be available to the property owner,” she said in a statement. “The property owner may also wish to consider civil remedies that could be available.”

Meanwhile, the Insurance Bureau of Canada said all municipalities have coverage with insurance for cases like this. But at the end of the day, the city or the insurance company may go after the guy who got stuck between the buildings.

“Whether he’s got money to pay for it, is a different story, in which case they’d take him to small claims court,” said Pete Karageorgos, IBC’s director of consumer and industry relations. “For (the building owner), that’s an accidental event — he didn’t plan on creating a hole in his kitchen.”

jyuen@postmedia.com