A man, barefoot and arched backwards, hung from a rope 150 feet overhead on a microwave tower on Casper Mountain.

A passerby on East End Road called authorities about 8:45 a.m. Tuesday after seeing the worker twisting in the wind helplessly alongside a tool bucket.

Natrona County dispatch alerted medical and other emergency responders about a "traumatic injury" on the mountain.

Responders including a Life Flight helicopter, two sheriff's vehicles, Casper Fire-EMS incident command and rescue units, and a fire protection district rescue unit, converged on the scene to save the life of …

… a dummy.

Casper Fire-EMS chief of operations Mark Harshman, among the first to respond, called the Western Area Power Administration, which owns the tower, and its district manager Dave Neumayer told him the rescue dummy was part of a training exercise last week in which a "worker" fell and broke his hip, Neumayer said.

Neumayer said the Casper Fire-EMS Department should have known about the dummy because it responded to the training exercise accident. Lightening slowed plans to remove the dummy, Neumayer said.

"I felt it was pretty obvious that it looked like a mannequin," he said.

Neumayer expressed regret about what happened. "We felt bad there was a response."

Sheriff's Sgt. Steven Leete wished the power administration had called dispatch about the dummy, because it didn't look like a dummy to everyone.

A phone call to authorities could have saved a lot of stress, time and money for the hospital, the Sheriff's Office and the city and county fire departments, he said.

The response potentially diverted emergency vehicles and personnel from real emergencies, Leete said, and put them on slick mountain roads.

"It put us in some jeopardy," he said.

Reporter Tom Morton can be reached at (307) 266-0592, or at Tom.Morton@casperstartribune.net.