Rescue Story: Paragliding pilot rescued after 9-hour operation
GORGAN, 14 June 2021 (IRCS) - Red Crescent’s rescuers were able to save a man who had crashed in Kordkoy’s forested mountain heights in the northern province of Golestan while paragliding on June 11. The man had started flight from Derzano site, the largest flight site in the Middle East in terms of altitude. Red Crescent’s rescuers managed to rescue the man after 9 hours of difficult operation.
Fatemeh Asgarinia/ Saeed Darvishi (IRCS)
The pilot, 40, was from Tehran. After flying to the mountainous and forested area of Kordkoy, he crashes due to bad weather and got lost. Fortunately, he was trapped among the branches of trees. He was very lucky that didn’t lose his conscious and did not develop Harness syndrome. This helped him to call the Red Crescent’s EOC at 11:30 a.m. and inform his location.
Although the rescuers had passed a busy day, they identified the location of the man immediately.
“The area where this man was suspended is one of the pristine and impassable points of the forested mountain of Kordkoy, which could not be reached by car. Red Crescent’s relief workers and rescuers were dispatched to the point by motorcycle. Deep valleys and steep slopes also made it impossible to ride a motorcycle, causing rescuers to walk a long way,” says Abdollah Hezarjeribi, head of the relief team.
Rescuers heard the sound of a paraglider pilot and found the exact spot where the man was trapped after a long distance. But the steep slope of the area didn’t allow them to reach him. So the rescuers had to go around the road to reach the man. This added one hour to reach the man.
“The paraglider was stuck on a tree 30 meters high. To transfer the man, we had to work in several workshops to succeed in moving him down from this height. It took about an hour and a half to move the man from a height of 30 meters to the bottom of the tree, and we finally managed to successfully complete this operation at 20:30 p.m.,” he added.
According to Hezarjeribi, big and small incidents happen for athletes and tourists every day in this forest and mountain. Some experience the incident due to unfamiliarity with the area and some because of the bad weather conditions.
He said that a few days earlier, an Iranian cyclist living in Canada was lost in 2,500 meters height of the region.
“The route chosen by cyclists in this forested area is mostly steep and there are many deep valleys along the way.”
Finding this cyclist was not difficult given the familiarity and mastery of the rescuers on the bike paths, but it became difficult when they were informed of the incident around sunset and the search in the dark of the forest doubled the difficulty. Due to the telephone connection, the rescuers managed to find him on one of the hard forest paths at 12 o'clock at night and transported him to the bottom of the mountain with rescue motorcycles.
The report was originally published in shahrvandonline.ir which is affiliated to the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS)
Images
