Rider fell from horse
By John Dew
It was the
last day of school and we who are teachers, as
well as the children, were looking forward to the
end of the day so we could be on our way home for
the summer vacation.
We were to get
out early that day, and this too, was a happy
thought. The last thing to cross my mind as the
end of the year party was drawing to a close and
grade cards were being handed out was a rescue
mission .... But, Sure Enough .... the pager came
alive to tell us there was work to do. The call
was to the Banning airport where we would be met
by Don Landells, our good friend and respected
helicopter pilot, flying his Jet Ranger.
We had heard that Patrick Conners, a
horseback rider who had been riding in high
country with several others including his eleven
year old son, had fallen from his horse and
injured his back. They were riding on the trail
where it had been built up by some rocks. The
rocks started to relocate themselves as the
weight of the horse was introduced and Patrick
felt that the horse was going to bolt and he had
better get off. As he was making his
unceremonious departure the animal did indeed
take a spill, rolled a time or two and got up and
ran away. The worst part was it left Patrick in
an immobile condition, thus RMRU was called in.
The bird
landed in Banning and Walt Walker, Tony Loro and
John Dew were flown in first. The subject was
soon Spotted and the problem of finding a place
to land and let us out presented itself. After
surveying the area for several minutes it was
decided to let Tony and John out on a big rock up
at Hidden Lake saddle and they could hike down to
the subject. Walt was flown closer to the subject
as there was a place one person could be let out
but three made too much weight for that
particular spot. By Walt being taken closer it
insured faster first aid attention.
A quick
examination of the subject told us he had a
fractured pelvic area and probably some fractured
ribs.
Jim Fairchild
and Kevin Walker came in and brought additional
equipment on the next load. The injured man was
placed on a back board and into a Stokes litter
and secured for his flight out.
We needed all
the help we could get to move the litter to the
spot where it could be picked up by the
helicopter so we used two State Park rangers who
were there, Rick Brown and Ken Gray, and also two
other hikers, a Marine, Dan Shupe from Oceanside
and his brother, Mark, from Frostburh, Md.
With this extra help we soon had
Patrick to the spot of the pickup. Kevin was sent
out to the hospital with him as this helispot
called for the lightest person available.
The park
rangers and Dan and Mark Shupe then continued on
to their destination of Round Valley and those of
us from RMRU hiked over to Skunk Cabbage Meadow
to be flown back to Banning where Ed Hill, Don
Chambers, Jim Garvey, and Steve Zappe were
manning base for us.
This ended
another successful mission for RMRU and another
grateful person that we were able to help.
|