TULARE COUNTY, CA – A 71-year-old retired firefighter was rescued after a paraglider crashed Tuesday afternoon in the Springville area of Tulare County.
Emergency responders say when 911 was called around 5 p.m., the exact location was unknown.
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Reach Air Emergency Medical Services in Porterville was on scene and was heavily involved in the rescue along with Tulare County paramedics.
The rescue team says everything was fine, from the victim’s consciousness after the crash to calling 911 and being able to locate him in a remote area.
You won’t guess what else fit perfectly? They tell FOX26 the accident victim was taken to the hospital where his daughter works.
The crew told me they found out about it on the way.
They said it was a pretty good result.
Reach Air Medical Services paramedic Tarin Tackett said: “We’re just lucky he had the right radios and the right GPS and was able to call for help himself because he wasn’t able to do that. It could have been hours before anyone realized he was there.
Tino Flores, the pilot who flew in that day, said the same thing.
“Oh man, our main concern was that the sun was definitely setting and all I remember was that he was wearing a thin long-sleeved shirt and some shorts. Navigating through this area would be quite difficult to reach without a helicopter,” he noted.
Tackett relates that before they arrived, no one had seen him yet.
“They were all at the base of one mountain, like they were looking up, and we flew over that ridge at the top and saw that he was on the other side. By being able to tell ground resources where he actually was, the speed was up a little bit… quite a bit,” he said.
Flores says the man crashed in a remote area.
They tell me that it is quite an isolated area and there is a lot of difficult terrain to traverse.
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As soon as they spotted him, they provided medical care, and after hiking to the top of the mountain, other agencies took over.
Due to his injuries, he was taken to hospital.
Tackett said: “He was in a lot of pain. But he asked if I could take his cell phone and call his wife.
So he did it. She says she asked what hospital they were taking him to.
When he answered where, his wife replied that their daughter worked there.
Flores said: “It’s rare, at least in my case, to have a scenario where we actually have a patient and we transport them to a trauma center where there’s actually a family member or, you know, another loved one who works at that center.” So I thought that was really cool, especially since the father actually received it.”
REACH Air Medical Services program director Danny Goranson said: “…great work from all sides, ambulance, fire communications, you know everything was very well matched on this call.”
The rescue team told FOX26 that the crash victim told them he didn’t know if he had bad winds, but his glider almost gave up when he was at 200 feet, inflating and deflating, causing him to fall.
Reach Air medical services said it took them less than 10 minutes to respond to the helicopter call.
Add the minutes it took to locate it and hike up the mountain, which took about 30-40 minutes total.