Elderly man rescued from state forest
A 70-year-old man long overdue to return home from a walk through deep woods in western Massachusetts was rescued just ahead of the deadly arctic blast.
“The Massachusetts State Police Air Wing is a tremendously valuable asset, something that is proven time and again in situations where a lost person’s life may hang in the balance,” said Dave Procopio, State Police spokesman, in a Friday statement.
Local police and firefighters learned at around 6:30 p.m. Thursday that a man had taken a walk through the Granville State Forest west of Springfield and had not returned home.
The local temperature at that time, according to the National Weather Service’s Norton office, was hovering around 30 degrees and the outlook was grim. The forecasted arctic blast would descend by 2 to 4 a.m.
Those local agencies joined with State Police units to hunt for the man as the temperature was by then 26 degrees. Luckily, according to the State Police statement, the man had his cellphone with him and had an intermittent signal.
He told dispatchers over the phone that he could see a helicopter above him. That would be MSP Air Wing helicopter Air 4, crewed by Sgt. Kristopher Malm and Troopers Kenneth Dinjian and Brendan Crowther.
The lost man was instructed to turn on his phone’s flashlight and point it at the helicopter, which he did. The flash was picked up by the helicopter’s forward looking infrared, or FLIR, camera, which is capable of detecting heat signatures against the cold backdrop of the forest. The helicopter’s crew was able to direct responders on the ground to the man’s location.
“The lost man may have suffered severe, or even fatal, consequences from the cold,” Procopio wrote in his statement. “We are extremely grateful that we and our partners at Granville Fire had the opportunity, training, and equipment necessary to make sure this incident had a good ending.”