North Shore Rescue has airlifted a critically injured senior from a remote area up Indian Arm.
The team got the call from the Emergency Operations Centre just after 1 p.m. Thursday alerting them to a 70-year-old man who had fallen more than 15 feet from a ladder onto the rocky beach below.
The man was working on his home on Coldwell Beach, a boat-access only strip of houses about eight kilometres up Indian Arm, when the incident happened.
“The information we had was he had spinal injuries and the tide was coming in and the (Canadian Coast Guard) hovercraft wasn’t available,” said Mike Danks, North Shore Rescue team leader.
Luckily, a Talon helicopter was gassed and ready, and a rescue team was deployed in about 15 minutes.
“He had taken quite a fall. He had significant injuries – potential internal injuries and some trauma to his face and neck,” Danks said. “He fell quite a long way onto some fairly large boulders.”
The team, which included Danks, an ER doctor, a nurse and one of North Shore Rescue’s newest recruits, packaged the subject up on a spine board and flew him to the Port of Vancouver heliport where an ambulance was waiting.
Had North Shore Rescue not been on standby, the injured man would have been reliant on a water taxi or private boat to get him to help, Danks said.
“One of our members has a place at Coldwell Beach and that’s one of his big concerns – the medical response to that area,” he said.
