Timely rescue saves teen’s life
ATV trip goes horribly wrong when rider speared by 10-cm tree
It’s doubtful any of the emergency personnel who attended a special reunion recently in Penticton ever expected to see their patient again.
Marissa Lemioer was 15 years old last July when she suffered a horrific injury while riding all-terrain vehicles with friends in a remote wilderness area on Apex Mountain.
A tree kicked up by one of the machines poked through its fender, then continued travelling up through Lemioer’s abdomen and out her back. The tree, which was approximately 10 centimetres in diameter, just narrowly missed her heart.
Her eventual rescue was complicated not only by the dire nature of the emergency, but also the remoteness of the accident site.
There was no cellular phone service in the area, so a friend had to ride down the mountain in order to summon help, leaving Lemioer behind with the log still in her.
Once the call was received by 911 dispatchers, personnel from the B.C. Ambulance Service and Penticton Search and Rescue were then faced with the difficult task of finding her.
Assisted by Penticton-based Eclipse Helicopters, the team finally located Lemioer about two hours after the accident.
Once they hiked into the scene from a safe landing spot nearby, the rescuers spent another two hours cutting away the ends of the tree and stabilizing Lemioer for transport, while also giving her a blood transfusion.
She was eventually hoisted from the scene — with part of the tree still in her — by a long line attached to a helicopter.
Lemioer was flown to a nearby staging area, and then transported to a B.C. Ambulance helicopter, which delivered her to Kelowna General Hospital and a team of doctors who were awaiting her arrival in the trauma unit.
B.C. Ambulance operations supervisor Glenn Braithwaite, who personally assisted with the rescue effort and is also a former PENSAR member, described the effort as one of the most challenging he’s been involved with in 30 years as a paramedic.
“This was a remote, essentially unknown location,” he said. “To complicate things, we knew we had a critical time sensitive situation, with not much daylight left. If we didn’t meet our objectives in the initial operations period, our patient would in all likelihood not survive.”
PENSAR president Dale Jorgensen was pleased to reunite with the other rescuers and their patient, and to know their training saves lives.
“We usually never get to see the subjects again after we turn them over to the B.C. Ambulance paramedics,” said Jorgensen, whose group was called out 60 times last year, with three-quarters of those missions being medical emergencies.