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Man fell from waterfall
By Brian Hixson
It was an
awfully hot Sunday afternoon to be out on a
rescue, but that didn't stop RMRU. We received a
call from the Hemet office of the Riverside
County Sheriff's Department, at about 1:00 in the
afternoon, and the information was a man had
fallen from the second falls in Massacre Canyon
and had possibly fractured his leg. We were also
told that the California Division of Forestry
volunteers had already been dispatched to the
area, and were attempting to bring the man out.
While enroute, we contacted the Hemet Search and
Rescue Team via MRA radio, and were advised that
they were about 15 minutes behind us. Walt
Walker, Kevin Walker, and myself were the first
from our team to arrive at the roadhead. It then
was a brisk 10 minute walk around to the top of
the first falls where we found that the CDF
volunteers had run into a problem, how to get the
man down the 30 foot waterfall that was partially
dry. Time for a little help from RMRU with a
technical lower. Besides our technical gear, we had brought in first aid gear,
but found that the Hemet Valley Ambulance had
also been dispatched before us and had already
sprinted the man's lower leg. Not long after
that, Steve Vaughn, Gary Fritzinger, and Mike
Giovani, Hemet team members arrived, and soon
after that our own John Dew.
We then went
to work on setting up anchors for a lower. With
Kevin handling the lowering system, John Dew on
the belay, and Walt and Steve Vaughn tending the
litter, we proceeded to lower the man down the
water fall to just arriving Jim Fairchild and
Larry Roland with the wheeled litter. We then
nested the CDF Stokes into our wheeled system.
After a brief wait for John, Kevin and I to clean
up (unhook) the lowering system, we wheeled the
man out to the waiting ambulance. Now would come
the real task, trying to obtain gasoline to make
it home.
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