Rescue from ‘near impossible to survive situation’

Monday 03 April 2017

Jersey’s Fire & Rescue service have released more details about the helicopter rescue of 59-year-old woman who fell 200 feet down cliffs at the weekend.

The emergency services were alerted late on Saturday afternoon by members of the public who had become concerned about what had happened to a woman they had seen on steep cliffs at Grosnez.

When the Police arrived, the woman had disappeared but some of her belongings were found on the cliff edge.

A Fire and Rescue Service spokesman says the team “responded with a full rope rescue team and arrived to a surely impossible to survive scene where the woman would have had to ‘free-fall’ 100ft before hitting rocks in a gully and potentially continuing to fall a further 100ft to sea level”.

Initially, one rescuer was lowered down the cliff to survey the scene and hopefully find the woman. Expectations were low that the rescuer would find a person still alive.

Fire, Police, Coastguard and Ambulance responders waited at the head of the cliff with no visual contact of the rescuer 200ft below.

The Fire and Rescue spokesman went on to say: “The unbelievable happened when the rescuer asked for a colleague to join him at the base of the cliff to assist in the rescue of a live casualty. As the second rescuer descended the cliffs the picture of what had happened to the woman as she fell became clearer. She had initially fallen a large height before making contact with a steep strip of grass which slowed rather than stopped her descent. She then fell from that strip a further 20ft onto rocks, which were greasy and wet from the tide. She slipped down these rocks finally falling through a gap between the large boulders a further 6-10ft where she came to rest completely trapped, unable to rescue herself and half submerged by sea water."

The first fire rescuer made the decision to enter the hole and with the help of his colleague ‘man-handled’ the woman out of her entrapment. It proved extremely difficult work. As the rescuer left the ‘hole’, the rising tide had one more twist to play as an enormous wave nearly took the woman and the two rescuers and filled the hole completely. The hole never emptied of water again from that point. 

French Search & Rescue helicopter, coordinated by Jersey Coastguard, eventually winched the casualty to safety pic.twitter.com/P8Wp3tmBwL

— Jersey Fire & Rescue (@JsyFire) April 1, 2017

The woman was placed in a stretcher ready to be hauled back up the cliffs when Jersey Coastguard secured the assistance of a French Search and Rescue helicopter. The helicopter was still 15 minutes out and a decision was made to lower a Jersey Paramedic to assist the Firefighters, provide the casualty with some much needed pain relief and get a better understanding of the woman’s injuries.

Bringing the casualty up the cliff by line would have been arduous and time consuming - possibly 20 minutes plus - but thankfully the French helicopter arrived on the scene and successfully winched the woman up to a waiting ambulance at Les Landes racecourse. The woman, whose name isn't being released, was treated in hospital, but only suffered minor cuts and bruises