A young 26-year-old English mountaineer has been injured after suffering a fall in Los Cahorros, in Monachil, in the metropolitan area of Granada (Spain), and has had to be evacuated by helicopter, as reported Friday by the Emergency 112 Andalusia and the Guardia Civil.
The 112 telephone number received a call on Thursday night, at about 21.45 hours, and the call reported a mountaineer who had suffered a fall of about 30 metres in the area of Los Cahorros and was in the river, in an area of difficult access. The service attached to the Presidency of the Junta de Andalucía indicated in a press release that it activated the Guardia Civil, who mobilised the Special Mountain Rescue Group (Greim) and the 061 Health Emergency Centre.
Guardia Civil officers informed 112 that the injured man had been rescued by their helicopter and transferred to the heli-surface at the Provincial Centre of 112 in Granada. From there, an ambulance transferred him to the Traumatology Hospital, belonging to the Virgen de las Nieves, in the capital of Granada.
In a press release, the Guardia Civil detailed that the injured man’s life was saved thanks to three other young people, two girls and a boy, who found him and asked for help. The paradox of this story is that the latter, of Polish nationality, met the injured man because they had taken a wrong turn and had got lost, as had possibly happened to the first two days earlier.
The young Englishman, as later happened to those who helped him, «instead of following the usual route, he took a fork in an area near the Vega power station, which turned out to be a dead end that forced him to continue cross-country, or turn back», the Guardia Civil have pointed out.
He would have then decided to continue looking for a way out, although «he slipped and fell down an embankment of
about 30 metres to the river in an area where there was no telephone coverage». As a result of the fall, he broke his knee, a rib and his head.
When they found the injured man, they rushed to him and, seeing that they could do nothing, decided that the young man would stay with him and the two girls would go down until they found cover and called for help.
From the Greim, four specialists were activated, who travelled first by car and then on foot to where the injured man and the young Pole who had stayed behind to look after him were located at around 3.00 a.m. on Friday.
RESCUE AT DAWN
As the area was very difficult to access, with a lot of vegetation, which made it practically impossible to get out of there with the stretcher, the officers considered it necessary for the rescue and evacuation of the injured person to be carried out by helicopter, so they had to wait until dawn.
Therefore, after assessing the victim, the officers immobilised his leg, neck and spine, placed him on the stretcher and kept him warm while waiting for the first light of day, when they loaded the stretcher upstream until they found a safe place where the helicopter could reach it. When the aircraft arrived, a crane cycle lifted the stretcher into the aircraft and evacuated the casualty to the helipad at the 112 Centre.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
