Real-life rescue - students put course skills into practice
Several Ara students were in the right place at the right time, able to apply their outdoor education skills to rescue a kayaker in the Ashley Gorge.
John Hollingsworth, Cam Pawson, Fletcher Phelan, Wil Robertson-King, and Breanna Ward -- all third year students in Outdoor Education and Sustainability -- decided to go “for an afternoon paddle” in the gorge on Saturday 20th February.
“About halfway down the river, we saw a man who had flipped his kayak. We helped get him out of the water, but it was starting to get cold. It wasn't safe to be out there anymore,” says Robertson-King.
Police and LandSAR rescue teams on site at Ashley Gorge after an emergency locator beacon was activated on Saturday night. (Photo credit: Stuff.co.nz)
Ward, who had medical experience as a trained lifeguard, noticed the man was starting to lose control of his movements and assessed him as having early-stage hypothermia.
“We put a helmet on his head so he wouldn’t lose heat and wrapped an emergency blanket around him. I sat behind him on his kayak and hugged him from behind, trying to warm him up,” she says.
Once they got him on dry land, they removed his wet clothes, gave him some food, and continued trying to warm him up.
“Our two emergency blankets were crucial” says Ward. Pawson and Phelan kayaked down the river to a nearby campsite to raise the alarm.
The group started a fire, even though the conditions were very wet. “Wil always carries a saw in his pack,” Ward says, “So he sawed off some of the drier branches of a manuka tree and removed the wet bark. He also had a lighter. Once we all warmed up, we were confident things would be ok.”
Their personal locator beacons were set off just after 9pm. But the heavy rains and high winds slowed the Land Search and Rescue’s and the rescue helicopter's progress. The man was finally brought to safety at the campground after midnight.
Mel Brooker, St John’s Oxford station manager who attended the rescue, says that the rescuers did everything right.
“For everything the kayaker did not bring or think about, the rest of them did perfectly. They had the right gear, the right thinking, and did everything they should’ve have. The guy would’ve died from hypothermia had they not made the right choices,” she says.
“It was incredible that in their early 20's, they knew exactly what to do, kept calm, and then did it. If I could recommend them for an award, I would.”
After the rescue, the students drove home in the middle of the night, de-briefing over takeaways.
Ward says “we thought we did things right, we had the right equipment, and we talked about the lessons learned. We’d all had a lot of experience in the outdoors, but it was great to bring our Outdoor Education training into real life.”
Stuff covered a full story about the rescue, which can be read here.