A woman who tried to retrieve her lost phone from among rocks in Australia’s Hunter Valley got stuck for seven hours before being rescued earlier this month.
Only the soles of the woman’s feet can be seen in photos of the incident posted on social media on Monday by the New South Wales (NSW) Ambulance service.
The woman was walking with friends on private property in Laguna, a town in the Hunter Valley about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Sydney, when she dropped her phone.
When he tried to take it, he looked first into a gap of 3 meters (about 10 feet) between two large rocks, so deep that his friends could not reach him. The woman’s name has not been officially released by the rescue service but NSW Police say she is 23-years-old.
NSW Ambulance specialist rescue paramedic Peter Watts told CNN there was no phone signal in the area so his colleagues had to call him for help.
He was one of the first on the scene on the morning of October 12.
“My initial thought was, how can we get him out of here? Because I’ve never seen this before,” he told CNN.
“In the ambulance rescue exercise, we will cover some trench rescue, confined space rescue and vertical rescue, and this is a combination of all those things in one project.”
When Watts and the others arrived, all they could see was a woman’s foot between a 10-centimeter (4-inch) gap in the rock.
“When he had crawled into this little hole, he jumped and slid about three meters down the chute and got stuck,” Watts said.
The area where he fell was about 50 meters (164 feet) down a bush track that was inaccessible even to off-road vehicles.
“We all put our heads together and determined the only way to get him out is to get out vertically, which means we have to remove these rocks,” Watts said.
A delicate rescue operation
Over the next seven hours, police, ambulance, fire and volunteer rescue crews worked to free him.
Rescuers advised him to stay still – they were worried that if he moved, he could go down the hole, making it harder to reach him.
It has been difficult enough to remove the surrounding rock without having to dig deeper.
“We were concerned that whenever we moved the rock, if it fell in the wrong direction, it would fall down on top of him,” Watts said.
Six large rocks had to be removed before rescuers could get close enough to touch his feet, he said.
“He was calm and collected all these things. I was very impressed. I was always frustic. He didn’t panic about anything,” said Watts.
However, sometimes he seems lonely, he said.
People are worried that they are too expensive for a long time and may suffer from the effects of excessive pressure on the limbs.
It took several hours before enough rock was removed for rescuers to gain access to one leg, then the other.
The remaining stone — weighing about 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) — proved difficult to move, Watts said.
“We used a winch to pull it out of the way. We used wood on either side to prevent it from shaking or rolling through a gap of 10 centimeters that was so small that we couldn’t do it,” said Watts.
Then they started to manipulate her body to get her out of the hole.
“The chute that he slid down didn’t go straight down, so we couldn’t pull him straight up,” Watts said.
They should make an ‘S’ shape, with their feet on one side, then the other.
“After we get the hips out, then we have to move his legs to the left to get his shoulders out. So, there’s a few maneuvers to get all of him out of that little gap.
After his release, about 4:30 p.m., Watts said he was “100% relieved.”
“He was tired, and he was a bit dizzy. All the blood was on his head, and his legs were empty, so he couldn’t stand, he couldn’t walk at that stage,” he said.
Miraculously, he escaped with only minor scratches and bruising.
The woman was taken to the hospital for observation. Her phone, however, remains trapped between the rocks.
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