Anchorage, Alaska – An Alaska man who was caught Faceedown in an frozen stream for a 700 -pound boulder (318 kilograms) for three hours survived the terrible experience with only minor injuries, thanks in part to the fast thought of his wife and good luck.
Kell Morris’s wife held her head over the water to avoid drowning while waiting for rescuers to arrive after Morris was immobilized by the rock, which crashed into him during a walk near a remote glacier to the south of Anchorage.
His second lucky blow came when a sled dog tourism company that operates in the glacier heard the 911 office and offered his helicopter to transport rescuers to the scene, which was inaccessible to all -terrain vehicles.
Once the rescuers arrived, seven men and inflatable airbags were needed to lift the rock while entering and left consciousness.
Morris, 61, said he realizes that he is probably the most fortunate man alive. “And more fortunate that I have a great wife,” he said Thursday.
His wife, Jo Roop, is a retired state soldier from Alaska. They moved to Seward, about 120 miles (193 kilometers) south of Anchorage, from Idaho the past fall when he took a job with the local police department.
Last Saturday, they wanted to avoid the great crowds that converge in the community of the Kenai Peninsula during the holidays and decided to walk near Godwin Glacier on an isolated path and without developing behind a state prison, said Seward Clinton firefighters.
Its path was actually a bed of rock stream bordered by large rocks deposited by the glacier.
Morris said he noticed dangerous rocks, some that weighed up to 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms), along the banks of the stream and avoided the best he could, until he found an area that could not happen.
“I came back and everything, the whole side slid below me,” he said.
He said things became blurred while falling through the embankment of about 20 feet (6 meters), landing face down in the water.
Then he immediately felt that the rock hit his back on what critics described as “basically an avalanche of rocks.”
The way Morris landed, there were rocks under him, among his legs and his surrounding that they captured the weight of the rock, preventing it from being crushed, Crites said. But the massive rock still had it fixed, and Morris felt intense pain in the left leg and waited for his femur to break.
“When it happened for the first time, I doubted it was a good result,” said Morris.
His wife tried to release him for about 30 minutes, placing rocks under the rock and trying to start it, before she left to find a cell signal.
Surprisingly, he only had to walk around 300 yards (274 meters) to connect with 911 and trust his experience of application of the law to send exact GPS coordinates to send.
A volunteer in the neighboring Fire Department of Bear Creek listened to the call while working in the sled dog tourism operation and diverted the helicopter used to transport tourists to the scene. Finally, firefighters who could not navigate their all -terrain vehicles on the rock field jumped from the helicopter.
At this time, Morris was hypothermic for the cold water that came out of the glacier, Crits said, and his wife held his head out of the water.
“I think that if we had not had that private helicopter, it helped us, it would have taken us at least another 45 minutes to reach him, and I’m not sure he had so much time,” Crites said.
Firefighters used two airbags normally reserved to extract people from shattered vehicles to slightly lift the rock.
“But then it became a brute force of all the hands of ‘one, two, three, push’,” Crites said. “And seven boys could lift it enough to get the victim.”
A Alaska National Guard helicopter pulled them out of the bed bed with a rescue basket.
Morris spent two nights at the local hospital for observation, but moved away unharmed.
“I completely anticipated a recovery of the body, not he moved away without scratching with him,” Crits said.
Morris, who now reflects on his terrible experience at home, acknowledged that he could have been a small attention call to stop doing things like his age.
“I was very lucky. God was taking care of me,” he said.
When he and his wife go on an excursion this weekend, they stay with established paths.
“We are going to stop the pioneer,” he said.
