Original subtitles

ALARM WARB LES

JASON DONE: On land, sea and air,

the front line of emergency rescue...

Ready? Set? Lift.

I immediately knew that we would be needing to take over her breathing.

...risking it all...

It was probably the most unpleasant injury

that I've ever seen on a live casualty.

We were in peril, and it was getting worse.

WOMAN SCREAMS

Good girl, good girl, good girl. WOMAN SCREAMS

...when every second counts...

Can you open your eyes for me, please?

Deep breaths on the gas. SHE INHALES

We're thinking, at any given time, she could fall off.

...and every decision...

Head injury. Neck Injury.

...could be life-changing.

It's nerve-racking at sea. You don't know where you're going to.

She's not moving.

I wasn't sure whether I was gonna end up over my head.

I don't want to contaminate.

And you're trying to stay strong.

But it's your child laying on the floor.

When we get involved,

it's because there's a matter of urgency needed.

In Norfolk...

MAN: She will be an RSI, but her destination to be decided.

...a critical call-out for the air ambulance.

MAN: When we walked in, it was immediately clear

that the lady was in a life-threatening condition.

So, we knew that we had to act fast.

In the Peak District...

Do you want to exit, Eleanor? You probably can't, can you?

...the race to save an injured climber.

The concern is you can bleed to death.

And on the south coast,

the crew of a marooned yacht in peril

as their boat is smashed against the shore.

The height of the waves was probably a metre, a metre and a half.

I could see the casualty boat.

It was in a very precarious position.

So I realised, at that point in time,

we need to do this pretty quickly.

ALARM WARB LES

So, I was at home working when the pager went off.

So I headed down to the station.

I live about a mile, as the crow flies,

from the boathouse.

So I was down very quickly.

We also get a notification on our phone, as well,

and it said, "Launch lifeboat to Ryde Sands."

Lovely clay for it!

It's freezing, and it's nearly May.

The volunteers of the Gosport and Fareham Inshore Rescue Service,

or GAFIRS,

go out to around 100 emergency calls a year

in Portsmouth Harbour and the Solent.

ANDY: Solent Coastguard, Solent Coastguard, Solent Coastguard,

this is Gosport Lifeboat, Gosport Lifeboat. Over.

I was told that the boat was aground in Ryde Harbour.

So we were away ancl across to Ryde very quickly.

The weather was pretty unpleasant.

The height of the waves was probably a metre, a metre and a half.

Probably blowing a force four, a force five.

So a generally quite unpleasant clay.

Volunteer crew James, Andy, and Lewis

are just two miles from the scene of the accident.

It should take four minutes to get there.

But the area is notorious for sandbanks

below the surface of the water.

One of the concerns in that part of Ryde Sands

is that the water can get incredibly shallow.

JAMES: It's constantly shifting,

and it's not charted particularly well.

So you never know what the depth is gonna be on the way in.

The lifeboat has sonar equipment

that measures the depth of water below it.

We can run in about 1.2 metres of water.

And we were at that.

At a couple of points, we saw a spike where it went below.

JAMES: It's drawing about 0.8 of a metre.

But it's cleared up.

LEWIS: So, it was getting to the point where

we were concerned that we were gonna run aground.

I was worried, if I'm honest.

I was worried whether we were gonna get all the way in.

We are literally just over a metre.

JAMES: Hold it a minute, Andy. just hold for a second.

We're at a metre and a half at the moment.

The team are in a race against time to reach the boat in distress.

My thought process was...

.."Even if we can't get all the way,

"if I can try and tow that boat free, I will do so.

"But only if I can get there."

We knew that it was time sensitive, we'd had to get over there quickly.

On board, the stricken vessel are husband and wife Peter and Mary.

I used to be a mountain leader in Snowdonia.

And, unfortunately, bits of me stopped working,

like knees and legs, and some would argue brain.

And so we went on a sailing course,

and I just took to it like a duck to water.

MARY: It was 40 degrees heat, and I hated it.

And we discovered that Peter really loved it.

And I didn't want to stop him doing something he loved.

But I didn't want to be like a downtrodden wife or anything,

but I thought we could probably work it out together.

I was leading a rally to Bembridge for the Royal Lymington,

and basically we decided to go a day early.

Unfortunately, the day early was really horrible.

Bad weather and the strength of the tide

mean Peter and Mary's yacht has become marooned on a sandbank.

MARY: Everything seemed to happen all at once.

The boat was starting to rock backwards and forwards

because the surf was coming in.

It was quite scary.

They are now being blown against wooden piles on the shoreline.

So every second counts.

It's a lot safer staying where you are than trying to jump,

trying to get my wife down into the crashing surf.

And so we couldn't get out,

which was an absolute pain in the bottom.

It's taken skilful navigation from the lifeboat crew

to finally get the vessel in their sights.

JAMES: I could see the casualty boat.

It was in a very precarious position.

I could see the two people on board were still there.

They weren't in a good situation.

So I realised at that point in time,

"We need to do this pretty quickly."

In East Anglia, the air ambulance has been called to a patient

who is critically ill.

When we walked in, it was immediately clear

that patient was in a life-threatening condition.

She was unconscious, so time was sort of against us.

Once I knew the air ambulance was coming,

I knew it was a very serious situation.

From their base in Cambridgeshire,

Magpas provides an air ambulance service

for over ten million people.

Steve has worked here for 12 years.

STEVE: The helicopter, the running costs,

all the medical equipment, everything's charity funded.

If I wasn't a paramedic, I'd probably be a police officer.

I did apply when I was 18,

and they told me to go and get more life experience.

So I joined the Ambulance Service and never left.

For this call, when it came in,

we'd just finished our morning checks.

We're airborne within five minutes.

A lot of people who work within the Ambulance Service

want to aspire to the air ambulance

because we train and treat the most seriously ill patients.

We get called to all sorts of emergencies.

Mostly things like road traffic collisions, cardiac arrests.

Ancl then other things like falls from height

or stabbings or shootings, those types of things.

So, for this case, the ambulance crews were on scene,

and they'd requested our support.

We were told that a lady was unconscious,

and there was a suspicion that it was caused by a bleed in the brain,

so a neurological cause.

We mentally prepare ourselves just by the information that we've got

and from our previous experience of dealing with similar cases,

and we start to plan for what we might find.

On that morning, it looked like she was asleep.

So, I, erm...

I went over to her and shouted, "Angela!"

She didn't respond.

I pinched her, she didn't respond.

I shouted again, she didn't respond.

I noticed there was a bit of froth around her mouth.

Ancl at that point, I realised I was in trouble.

Jason's wife, Angela, is critically ill,

and the team on the scene have done all they can.

But air ambulance crew can carry out more complex medical procedures

than other paramedics.

We were called because the patient was unconscious

and was having problems with the airway and breathing.

So, we're trained to deliver an an aesthetic if it's appropriate.

Basically, putting a patient into a medically induced coma

in order to look after vital functions.

It took us 17 minutes to reach the patient in King's Lynn.

When we approached the scene, we were met by an ambulance manager,

who gave us a bit of a handover.

When we walked in, it was immediately clear

that the lady was in a life-threatening condition.

She was unconscious, and she was struggling with her breathing,

so we knew that we had to act fast.

Coming up, battling the elements...

It can look like a blue-sky clay and then quickly change.

...to save a climber in the Scottish Highlands.

We didn't know if she was hanging on

or if she was in really perilous ground.

We were thinking, at any given time, she could fall off.

And on the Isle of Wight...

PETER: Waves were crashing in,

and that's what had driven us more and more towards the two piles.

...the yacht rescue reaches a critical stage.

At that point, I was wondering

whether we were actually gonna make this work.

JASON DONE: In Derbyshire, mountain rescue are on a call-out

to a casualty who could have life-threatening injuries.

WOMAN: Are we gonna go headfirst? MAN: We're gonna go up headfirst.

A fallen climber.

Fallen maybe five metres or more.

I've seen people who've fallen less far than that and killed themselves.

Yeah, you just think, "Oh, crap. Yeah, oh, crap.

"This is not good, is it?"

It was about 15:20 in the afternoon on a bank holiday Monday,

and I was mountain biking in the Peak District.

And I got a call to say

there was an incident happening at Millstone Edge.

All the information we'd got was s0me0ne's fallen 15 feet.

I'd gone to help fund raise in the afternoon.

Then a text came in, yeah.

I packed up my stuff, off we went.

Blue lights on the vehicle, up the hill.

Tony and Dave are members of Edale Mountain Rescue,

and they're on their way to Millstone Edge,

a treacherous 40-metre outcrop popular with climbers.

DAVE: If you get a report of anybody fallen at that kind of height,

it's significant.

The mechanics of the fall tell us it's gonna be serious,

whether it's a back, neck, head, or pelvis, femur, anything.

So we know straight away our senses are right,

and it's gonna be serious.

Right...

No, I'm off this way.

TONY: You start thinking, you know, "ls there a doctor,

"is there a paramedic?"

You know, as a normal team member with your casualty care training,

you know what to do, but you know you can't go as far as the, erm...

the doctors.

It's 30 minutes since the call-out.

And Tony and other members of the team

have driven as close as they can to the accident site.

But now they face a steep, uphill climb to get to the casualty.

Up you go, try not to fall over and look silly.

TONY: I'm a local authority planning officer.

I'm part-time. I job share.

The rest of the week, for the last eight years,

I've been bringing up my two little boys.

It's a hobby that I can justify going out and doing,

having, you know, kids, family.

You know, it's satisfying, it's really satisfying.

Ta.

MAN: All right, mate. Good luck. Ta.

It takes a large team to get a casualty to safety.

And medics and members of mountain rescue

have already reached the scene on foot.

But it's vital Tony gets there

because he's got a specialist stretcher

designed for use over rugged terrain.

Without it, the casualty won't get out.

TONY: Happy with us going down there?

We're not gonna drop anything on anybody?

MAN: No, I can see them from here. Ta.

There's worse than Millstone, but it's got good, knobbly bits.

We got to the top of the down climb, sized it up.

The temptation when you're going down is to face forwards.

Not a good idea with a stretcher on your back.

You've got to be very careful.

Right.

TONY: The chap had fallen from five metres.

You know, the height of your gutters on your house.

He landed on his backside.

I've seen people who've fallen less far than that and killed themselves.

The injuries are a bit like car crashes

cos there's a lot of force involved.

I've seen a call-out, somebody who fell from the same height

and disintegrated a few vertebrae.

There was a paramedic and doctor.

They Top Trump us as your average team member.

It tends to be the more serious jobs

where they'll tend to take over and direct a bit more.

WOMAN: So, if we can have kit put to one side.

Ancl when we've got enough hands to be able to do a many-handed lift...

You know, it was clear there was concern

about the possibility of a fractured pelvis.

WOMAN: Pelvic binder on. Back mat on.

Then we'll bring the stretcher in, onto the stretcher,

and then you guys can sort out the stretcher.

ANDY: OK, yeah, fine.

Ancl the concern with a pelvic injury is you can...

bleed to death.

In Ryde Harbour, lifeboat crew are racing to rescue a stricken yacht

stuck fast on a sandbank

as it's smashed against wooden piles on the shoreline.

JAMES: Right, I'm gonna have to spin her here.

But there's a problem.

We couldn't get close enough. It was just too shallow.

We could see that the vessel was in a fairly perilous state.

So, I looked at James and said, "Do you want me to go?"

I basically said, "|'m happy. If you want me to go, I'll go."

I wasn't really sure what I was going to go into, really,

because on the way in, the depth had been quite variable.

I wasn't sure whether I was gonna end up over my head.

Are you all right? Yeah.

Can you see now as much as we can?

LEWIS: It was a case of making my way over to the casualty vessel.

It was fairly hard going.

LEWIS: I've worked in construction for years.

I'd never touched a boat before I joined GAFIRS.

And now I know enough to go out and help people

in what can be dangerous situations.

'I can see there's two people on board, a male and a female.

'The male's up near the bow of the vessel.'

I think Mary's initial reaction was, er, really...

bad.

LEWIS: The lady was quite shocked by what had happened.

She didn't look very comfortable at all.

The boat was rocking backwards and forwards so much,

it is a little bit dangerous

because it would be very easy to fall off.

PETER: The boat was about two to three metres away from the rocks.

Hm, not good.

I was worried that if I didn't get off really quickly,

we would be stuck there for 12, 24 hours.

LEWIS: So, what I need you to do

is get your line preferably across two cleats.

JAMES: Normally, Lewis would climb on and he would attach the line.

We didn't have the time to do that. It was a case of hand the line over,

ask the casualties to make it fast, make it secure.

With the line attached, the lifeboat,

which has more than four times the horsepower

of the average family car,

is ready to tow the yacht.

Go!

JAMES: When you start towing on the lifeboat,

the back of the lifeboat clips down.

So it means that it's getting closer to the bottom.

So I realised I couldn't put on as much power as I wanted to do,

because the more I do that, the more the chances of the boat

touching the bottom of the sand.

Is it moving?

It's not turning on.

And the towline slipped, and the boat didn't move.

ANDY: She's not moving.

Ancl at that point, I was wondering whether

we were actually gonna make this work.

LEWIS: Right, just stand back in case it swings.

PETER: Waves were coming all the time. They were crashing in.

Ancl that's what had driven us more and more towards the two piles.

But Andy managed to reattach the towline,

and I just thought at that point,

"We'll just give it a little bit more power."

Ancl the gods were favourable at that point in time.

A wave came in, lifted the back of the boat up

just as we put the power on, and the boat broke free.

Ancl I was watching the depth as we were going along,

and we stayed at 0.7, 0.8 for quite a while.

Ancl then, eventually, it got to 0.9 and 1.0.

Andy and I picked our way back out the channel that we came in

to deeper water.

And when we got to that deeper water,

there was a big sense of relief.

If we hadn't got them off that sandbar,

they would have been there for at least eight, probably ten hours

before they could move.

And I think we can safely say the boat would have been damaged.

MARY: I thought they were incredible.

They were just doing anything possible to help us.

PETER: It takes a certain finite time for these chaps

to get into their dry suits and launch their boat.

But I'll tell you something, when you do see it thundering across

and you can see the spray coming out of the front,

you think, "Oh, thank God for that."

I was very relieved and happy.

Happier than I normally am when I go sailing.

JAMES: Solent, this is Gosport Lifeboat. Over.

A job well done, and everyone's happy.

Well, almost everyone.

We did leave Lewis onshore. We didn't have time to pick him up.

So, after all that hard work, the crew abandoned me, essentially.

Our main job at that point in time was to get that boat free

and get those people into an area of safety.

Ancl if that meant picking up Lewis later,

unfortunately, that's what's gonna have to happen.

No, it was all right in the end,

cos I got a lift to Ryde Pier in a council van.

In Scotland, volunteers Stephen and Mark from Killin Mountain Rescue

are responding to a 999 call from a lost hiker.

We had a female who was cragfast on Ben Oss.

It means to be stuck on a crag and not being able to go up or down.

So, we're thinking, at any given time, she could fall off.

It's actually the number one most scared I've been.

Nothing, nothing comes close.

MAN: My day job at the moment is I've got the cafe.

We were reasonably busy.

I saw the call-out come through for a casualty stuck on Ben Oss.

I was in work at the time

and then got a phone call from one of the team coordinators saying,

"Look, there's a call-out coming through,

"can you get to base pretty quickly?"

So I then cycle back home.

It's a 15-minute cycle.

But when the call comes through, it feels quicker.

Killin Mountain Rescue

covers a remote area of the Scottish Highlands

that includes 19 peaks of over 3,000 feet.

And the casualty is stuck near the summit of one of them, Ben Oss.

The weather conditions on the clay were cloudy.

It had snowed the clay before.

The initial call-out did say she was sat...

0|'! SHOW.

MARK: We didn't know if she was hanging on

or if she was in perilous ground.

The hardest thing when you are in the mountains is the weather,

because it can look like a blue-sky clay

and then quickly change.

We were keen to get there.

The casualty is six miles from the nearest accessible road

at an altitude of over 3,000 feet.

So the mountain rescue team have to call for assistance.

The Coastguard helicopter from Prestwick

was making its way to ourselves.

We were gonna need to get the helicopter

to ferry us up the hill as high as we can.

Stephen and a third rescuer, Lisa, are at the helicopter landing site.

MARK: They phoned me when I was nearby, about ten, 15 minutes away,

to say, "Look, there's a helicopter here."

So I was under a bit of pressure to get there quick.

We also knew the casualty had been sitting a good, long time.

Ancl also, the weather window could have closed in,

and we could have then not actually been able

to get air lifted up to the hill.

So we didn't want to hang around having a chat.

We wanted it to be as slick and quick as possible.

LISA: So, you're looking to drop us...

MARK: As close as we can. ..this area?

I got there in time, just.

I had no time to do anything other than gear up, get out there,

and it was pretty much straight into the helicopter.

Coming up, in the Peak District...

DAVE: Anybody else? There's a big, old job here.

...the battle to get the injured climber to hospital.

As it turned out, getting him out was the hardest bit.

You just think, "Oh, crap. Yeah, oh, crap. This is not good, is it?"

And in Norfolk, the air ambulance deliver emergency care

to their critically ill patient.

I immediately knew that we would be needing to take over her breathing.

JASON DONE: In the Highlands, a hiker is stuck 3,000 feet up

on a steep incline in freezing conditions.

It's late afternoon, and the weather can worsen in minutes.

There's not a second to lose.

So a helicopter's been scrambled

to get rescuers Lisa, Mark, and Stephen

as close as possible to the casualty.

MARK: From the helicopter, I could see clag, or what we call a clag,

which is a big cloudy sort of mist across the top of the mountain.

So, he was gonna try and drop us in as high as he can

so we could get as close as possible.

But as we picked up and flew in towards it,

that mist had dropped and dropped and dropped.

So they dropped us off at about 500 metres.

Ancl then we had to walk up and get to the casualty.

LISA: Right, let's see, we're at the bottom of the hill road.

STEPHEN: 2.4, 2.1 kilometres.

LISA: Yeah.

That clay, there was very light drizzle at the base of the hill.

Ancl no-one else was out, it was amazing.

I felt very calm and at peace.

But basically, the higher I climbed, the less friendly the climate got.

The cloud had come down a little bit,

and I missed a turning, and I ended up going off the path.

Unfortunately, the higher I went, the steeper it got,

until I was absolutely stuck.

The snow had come down, and I just couldn't move.

So I found a little patch to sit and wait, and I called for help.

As we gained altitude, it was just cloudy,

not great visibility, I'd say.

We crossed a snow slope as well, so I had to get my ice axe out

to make sure that it was safe to cross the snow slope.

BETH: I started hearing a helicopter, which...

I mean, the sense of relief when I first heard it was...

was just incredible, and then...

and then it left.

Ancl I didn't know if the helicopter specifically was looking for me.

So I felt completely stuck.

Ancl there was a lot of panic.

MARK: I imagine she thought, "Brilliant, they're coming."

There would absolutely have been, "Well, why aren't they here?"

Couldn't have been fun.

You have to keep a little bit of banter to keep the morale up.

STEPHEN: If only we could see, we might have clone something different.

That bit of a comradery and banter is right up there,

right up there with even the skills you get taught.

MARK: I don't get to go up with you guys. You're the elite.

LISA: We're the elite. I'm just the follower at the back.

You know, just the unsung hero. LISA LAUGHS

And that's what gets you through the big days out.

I was sitting still for four hours.

Ancl then I could hear, I think it must have been Stephen, yelling.

Ancl I've got a whistle that I always carry with me.

So I just started blowing this whistle like mad.

WHISTLE BLASTS

Myself and Lisa, we could hear from her whistle blasts

for quite a while, maybe 200 metres away,

and we could tell, actually, they were just below us.

And as we approached, I actually have to admit I didn't see Beth

until I was probably about 50, maybe 100 metres away.

WHISTLE BLASTS

LISA: Right...

So, erm, just cold right now, yeah? BETH: Yeah.

Is that all? You haven't fallen? No.

I mean, I hadn't seen anyone for hours prior to meeting them.

It was such a relief.

'I was crying.

'I was just so happy to be looked after.'

That's a long time to sit.

But I knew, probably, that once you've disappeared from somewhere,

it's really, really difficult to track you down.

So I was quite happy just to sit and wait.

That seemed like the lesser of the two evils, anyway.

She wasn't injured. She was just stressed and cold and worried.

I would class Beth as the perfect casualty.

She sat still, and she was making noise.

Perfect. What a lot of them might do is they get bored or panicky,

and they'll try and move off where they are.

It then becomes a massive search.

They've walked off, we can't get comms, we don't know where they are.

BETH: It's actually the number one most scared I've been.

Nothing, nothing comes close.

I guess until you have a worse experience,

it can feel, you know, the closest you've been to dying.

Hi!

How are you doing? Really well, thanks. How are you?

You look slightly warmer than last time we saw you.

Come on, hug it out. Hug it out. Really nice to see you again.

I mean, the team is incredible.

The fact that they do that in their own time. They're not paid.

They just have to take that call and go and save someone.

I'm so thankful.

And Beth's got a thank-you gift for the boys.

A fish and chip dinner.

STEPHEN: I'm guessing for Beth, it was a horrible thing for her.

But for us, it was a good rescue.

Everything worked out as planned.

I get asked all the time, "ls it people with flip-flops you rescue?"

I can safely say, in my 14 years,

I have not seen a pair of flip-flops.

It can go wrong for anybody.

MARK: Have you been back out after your traumatic incident?

Yeah. I did Yorkshire Three Peaks this weekend.

I can hardly walk now.

MARK: You should join our team. Yeah!

THEY LAUGH

The Magpas air ambulance team are attending Jason's wife, Angela,

who is unconscious and in a critical condition.

We had a few ideas what the causes of her being unconscious could be,

but we weren't 100% certain.

When I went to speak to Jason, he gave me some medical history.

She's diabetic, is that right? That's right.

She's not on insulin, is she? She's on insulin, yeah.

OK, no worries.

The very first date I had with Angela was a good 16 years ago now.

I just felt that she was the woman for me.

Ancl we've been married for eight years.

She's very kind, very compassionate.

just an amazing woman.

Angela needs hospital care urgently, but she's struggling to breathe.

So she requires intervention from the air ambulance crew right away.

STEVE: When I saw the patient,

I immediately knew that we would be needing to take over her breathing.

And we decided to do that in the ambulance outside.

Taking over her breathing

will ensure oxygen gets to Angela's brain and other organs.

But while unconscious,

the risk of gagging on the tubing inserted in her mouth increases.

So, in the ambulance, we set about performing emergency anaesthesia.

It's a procedure where we give drugs

in order to sedate the patient and to stop them breathing.

Ancl that way, we're able to take over the function of the lungs.

STEVE: Ancl nasal O2 in sit...

She will probably tolerate it. I'll whack it up to 15.

Emergency anaesthesia in the UK is generally only performed

by critical care teams and air ambulances.

Ancl that's mainly because of the high level of training

and the drugs required to perform that procedure.

When they told me they were gonna put her to sleep,

I knew that was good for her

in the sense that she would have proper control of the oxygen

that's being fed into her.

But I was still anxious, I was still worried.

The an aesthetic has worked.

To stabilise Angela's condition,

the team now start the process of intubation,

taking over her breathing.

There are risks that come with intubating a patient.

So, when we give the emergency anaesthesia,

the patient will stop breathing.

Ancl we've only got a very small amount of time

to get the breathing tube in and take over.

Ancl that was a real worry that we had.

There was no complications. She remained stable throughout.

At that point, we decided to go to the local hospital,

where she could undergo further tests.

The hospital eventually discovered that Angela had got pneumonia.

After a few clays, she'd improved enough to be taken out of sedation.

And that was, erm...

...that was a good time.

I really believed at that point in time

that I was gonna get my wife back.

But the doctor spoke to me after ten clays

and told me that...

realistically, it's unlikely that she'll recover from this.

So we agreed that the best thing for Angela

was to remove the ventilator.

Which we did.

Ancl she died peacefully within a few minutes.

It was the hardest few minutes of my life.

I'd really like to thank the team at Magpas,

who put Angela into a stable condition,

which allowed me to have some quality time with her

before she passed.

Ancl that time I will cherish for the rest of my life.

It was really sad to find out that Angela didn't survive.

We knew at the time that she was critically unwell

and that she may not survive.

We only get called to really the most critically ill patients.

But we're always hopeful.

In the Peak District, Tony and the rest of the mountain rescue team

are with a climber who's fallen 15 feet down a sheer rock face.

TONY: What's your name, buddy? It's Chris.

Chris, my name's Tony. Hi, Tony.

All right, matey?

Falling on your backside from five metres,

it's gonna hurt, and it could fracture your pelvis.

Ancl there's lots of big blood vessels.

You can lose enough blood into that space to die.

Yeah, you just think, "Oh, crap."

Yeah. "Oh, crap. This is not good, is it?"

CHRIS: I'm a rope access manager, basically a professional climber.

I've never climbed that before.

Unfortunately, what happened was

when I was just sitting down to abseil,

the gear failed, I guess.

That's the point where I closed my eyes and sort of, like, went limp.

I was like, "Right, I'd better just relax,"

and hit the deck.

My biggest fear was...

"paralysis.

TONY: Chris...

are you able to straighten your legs at all, or will that hurt loads?

I'm not hurting loads. It does hurt, though.

WOMAN: It might hurt a bit more when we move you.

Chris has been given gas and air to ease his pain.

Now he needs to get to hospital as soon as possible.

But the road and air ambulance landing site

are both about half a mile away.

So it's down to the skill of the mountain rescue team to get him out.

For me, it's...

it's that thought of, "|t could be me.

"|t could be one of my family members. A friend."

You know, and you're able to go out and...

you're able to go out and help them.

You've got to try and minimise the movement as much as possible.

TONY: We're gonna bring the stretcher up to you guys.

Especially with a pelvic injury.

TONY: Everybody ready? Ready? Brace, lift.

But catch-22, you've got to get him out of there.

TONY: Keep coming, keep coming, keep coming.

And dear.

To minimise movement, Chris has been put in a pelvic binder

and a vacuum mattress.

Now the team have to carefully transfer him onto the stretcher.

CHRIS: I was sore, it was really quite painful.

I was worried about it.

WOMAN: Ready? Steady? And lift.

TONY: Oh, whoa, whoa, stop. Something's caught.

Ancl lower slowly.

Stretcher up.

Yeah, we're off. We're good to go now.

WOMAN: And we'll start it again. Ready? Steady? Lift.

And down.

Beautiful.

Everybody OK? Yeah.

TONY: How's that? Are you all right? CHRIS: Yeah.

OK, well done.

More fun begins once they're on the stretcher.

How are we gonna get them out?

It's an hour since the call-out.

And now mountain rescue have to get the stretcher

up an almost vertical slope to the nearest walking track.

You've got to try and make the trip as less bouncy as possible.

MAN: Everybody ready to lift?

Lift on three. One, two, three.

Ancl as it turned out, getting him out was the hardest bit.

WOMAN: Are we gonna go headfirst there?

TONY: We're gonna go up headfirst.

We used a technique called hand over hand.

So, you all stand in a row, and you pass the stretcher along.

MAN: I'm gonna have to pass. TONY: Pass from here?

OK, get in nice and close. Closer than you think.

Nice and close.

There are 12 people working to move the stretcher up the slope.

TONY: Hold it there.

Do you need to rest it on that rock? WOMAN: Yeah.

Yeah? OK.

So, you'll tend to find somebody at the front

micro navigating as best they can

around the lumps and bumps to even things out.

DAVE: Anybody else? There's a big, old job here.

Hole on the left. Hole on this side, left.

WOMAN: Yeah, it's a bit unstable here.

TONY: Are you all right? WOMAN: Yeah.

I was worried, to be honest, whilst I was getting stretchered out.

WOMAN: Where are we going? TONY: Good, deep breaths on that.

It should reduce it.

At the end of the clay, it was somebody having a nice clay.

Ancl now they're not. And they're like, "My God, what's happening?"

I just have a chat with them.

TONY: We've got you, buddy.

We had a couple of laughs and jokes.

LAUGHTER

WOMAN: I don't know if that's reassuring or not.

TONY: Probably not. I've probably made it worse!

Where do you need me, buddy?

It's all good.

The team are within touching distance of the summit.

TONY: Prepare to lift.

And lift.

And move.

But there's one final incline.

And it's too steep to climb without slipping.

TONY: It's just hand over hand, mate, this bit now.

We've come to a bit of a dead end.

Do you want to exit, Eleanor?

You probably can't, can you? Don't know if I can, if I'm honest.

After a gruelling climb...

I'm ready if you're ready. Thanks, mate.

OK, and...

...the team have finally reached the top of the slope.

TONY: We're coming up.

Yeah, come on, buddy. Got him.

Now all that's left

is to carefully lift Chris over onto the cliff-top path.

TONY: And lift.

There we go. Beautiful.

There's a path that runs along the top of the cliff,

into the car park, into the ambulance.

MAN: Slowly, slowly, slowly. Nice and gentle.

You're on the path, job's a good 'un.

TONY: Well clone.

But don't drop the casualty. Yeah, must remember not to do that.

CHRIS: How do you make light of a situation like that?

But they, you know, managed to make you feel at ease.

And they're 'gust as good at that

as they are with, you know, everything else.

TONY: 'We have never dropped a casualty once.'

I'm just saying that, in 12 years.

Yeah.

When I got to the hospital, they said,

"We can't see any fractures at all."

Which was a massive relief.

Yeah, I just couldn't really do a hell of a lot

for a couple of clays.

But, erm... my recovery's been really, really fast.

I think Chris was pretty lucky.

I've seen people fall from that height

and then fracture femurs, pelvises.

I've seen people fracture their skulls.

I've been working up at heights for a long, long time.

Ancl the kind of work that I do

sort of makes you very aware of the risks involved.

So I'm really grateful to the mountain rescue team

for coming and getting us out of there.

A lot of the time, if you have an accident somewhere like that,

they're the only people that you can really, you know, rely on

to come and get you.

But, yeah, it's just a little bit embarrassing being that guy.

If that's his main comment, that's a good thing.

It must be embarrassing, but flipping heck,

he got spared the cheese jokes, so he probably got let off lightly.

Have you heard about the explosion at the, erm, French cheese factory?

You've not heard about that?

Apparently, there was a lot of the de-brie.

It's really bad, isn't it? God, it's so bad.

It was almost 20 minutes of his heart not beating.

We've shocked him three times.

Only around 8% of patients will survive.

Deep breath in again. SHE SOBS

You have to be careful with back injuries.

If it is a spinal injury, they could be paralysed.

Lift.

It's a sobering moment, cos there is the potential to lose the foot.

They were very close to one of the main shipping channels.

And that makes that very dangerous

and a very real threat to their lives.