Man With Broken Leg Rescued From Mauna Kea Summit

[kalakoa]

https://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2019/...ea-summit/

There must be some desecration in there somewhere.

[terracore]

"Personnel were rotated as needed. Due to the lack of Oxygen, personnel could only carry the patient for approximately 10' at a time before stopping to catch their breath. It took approximately 3.5 hours to navigate the 1 mile distance and 700' elevation gain while carrying the patient. Rescuers worked tirelessly despite the cold temperatures and altitude sickness."

That sounds horrible. I wonder why our rescuers can't have proper mountaineering gear including oxygen.

ETA: formatting

[MarkD]

Amazing how people, primarily tourists and recent mainland arrivals, regularly injure themselves in some of our wild places that lack serious danger, comparatively.

Oahu's mountains, filled with razor back ridges and sheer, unstable slopes, are highly prone to fatal falls.

Mauna Kea's slopes are not that steep. And they are not obscured by vegetation--a major factor in Oahu and Maui cliff falls.

Any day now we'll have a tourist drown in 3 feet of water. Time for another tax on tourists: Wildland use.

[hilodiver]

I think they meant 10 minutes, not 10 feet! Altitude is a huge factor up there, especially when you don't have time to acclimatise. The terrain off the trail is very rocky and there are huge ravines. This kind of incident happens several times a year. Unfortunately, the rescue helicopters don't have enough lift at that altitude. Best to be safe and stay on the trails!

Aloha!

[TomK]

hilodiver - I suspect you are correct, ten seconds is just enough time to lift a patient in a stretcher and put them down again! As for how dangerous hiking on Mauna Kea is, well, I don't know the exact location of the incident, but if the hiker was on cinder that stuff can be particularly nasty as I found out myself many years ago when walking between observatories - managed to shred my knee.

The rescuers did a great job, thank you PTA staff and the Mauna Kea rangers. As for the suggestion that they might carry supplemental oxygen, I don't think that's a bad idea at all.

[Pilgrim]

Maybe if they start charging tourists for rescues they could afford the proper gear.

[TomK]

It's not only tourists that need rescuing from the mountain.

[Obie]

They had to haul him up a 40 degree incline.

“It’s about one or two miles from the observatories,” Donnelly said. “They find the guy, splint the leg, put him in a rigid Stokes litter, and then they’ve got to haul the guy about two miles. It was a 40-degree incline. It took them four hours to get them back to” a waiting county ambulance."

[leilanidude]

Wonder why they didn't utilize a Blackhawk helicopter which has the ability to take-off and land as well as hover at much higher altitudes than that.

[randomq]

We just need to hire some Tibetan rangers!

So who was this guy? Tourist, practitioner, local, staff?