20 firemen to get 300-kilo French man to hospital

A 300-kilo (660-pound) Frenchman who was unable to leave his home by himself has been hospitalised in an operation requiring 20 emergency workers and a stone mason.

The mason was deployed to widen a second-floor window in the building where the obese 48-year-old man lived in Cazeres, in the Haute-Garonne area of southwestern France, the town's mayor, Michel Oliva, told AFP.

A group of 20 firemen and rescue workers then used a reinforced stretcher normally used in mountain rescues to get the man through the window space and down to ground level before transferring him to hospital.

The man, who weighed four times the average Frenchman, told local newspaper La Depeche du Midi he had been unable to move from one room of his flat for the last two years.

"My health got worse with the heatwaves we had this summer and my doctor had warned me I had a one in two chance of dying," he said.