A Mountain Rescue!!!

Yesterday was quite exciting from 'our' point of view (mine, Pat and Joe's). Though maybe not quite so interesting from the point of view of the injured lady!

It was late afternoon when I heard the helicopter above the house. This is nothting new here because the village has a hangar for helicopters about a kilometer from me.... But this one was very close and didn't 'disappear'!!! Now that was unusal.

So we became curious (not to say - even NOSY) and went out to see what was going on. The helicopter was hovering above the woods a good way up the mountain, but out of our view. It was clear that a 'rescue' was in progress. There wasanother one a year ago too - but I didn't have a camera then. After about 20 mins the helicopter flew back over, circled and came to land in a field about 150 meters from the house. There it stayed for a while then took off again and went back to hovering above the woods. By now I think the entire population of the village was along the road watching the drama unfold.....
The woods behind me are very popular for wild mushrooms - the 'locals' - who know just where to find them - collect kilo's of them every autumn. But there are often some who are injured when falling/slipping on the wet leaves following rain. In fact that was just what had happened - an elerly local lady who was collecting these funghi with her husband had slipped and fallen down a steep slope breaking her arm. Unfortunately she was in a narrow gap and while the chopper could lower a doctor down, they could not get a stretcher down to get her out. So the local village mountain rescue team had to climb up and carry her down to the ambulance....

I understand from 'my lady who does for me' this morning that the injured lady is fine this morning, but is angry for being so careless - not because she fell - but because she dropped her mushrooms!!!

So the helicopter hung around until they came down with the injured faller, who was put into the ambulance and taken off to the hospital at Morbegno.

Let's hope this will be the only incident of this kind this autumn, as while mushrooms are the current 'treasure' - in just a few days it will be the sweet chestnuts....and the way I see it, neither a mushroom OR a chestnut (free or not) will ever be worth risking life or limb for!


All the photo's here were taken from my balcony and from the back window looking up the mountain 'out back'!!!!

posted by Carole B @ 9:30 AM