The Taranaki Rescue Helicopter Trust FRIENDS fundraising campaign is now on.
Become a FRIEND and together we can save lives.
Over the next eight weeks representatives of the Taranaki Rescue Helicopter will be calling homes rallying for help – will you answer the call for help?
By freelance writer Sharyn Smart
Stratford man Guy Vickers says he would have died without the help of the Taranaki Rescue Helicopter crew winching him off Mt Taranaki.
“I can’t describe the feeling when I heard the thump of the copter. It was an amazing feeling. The first person to see me was crewman Phil Dwyer. He pointed to me and gave me two ‘thumbs up’ from the chopper cargo bay. At that point I knew that I was absolutely safe. They’d found me.”
Guy was climbing on the slopes of Mt Taranaki when he fell threw a snow pocket and severely broke multiple bones in his ankle.
“I walked into the gully OK on snow … but as I retraced my steps I chose to move further down towards the gully base. After the fourth step my left foot just broke through the surface of the snow and I went down about a metre where my crampons grabbed on a sloping rock underneath. The weight of my body with my day pack came down on that left foot and just snapped outwards, breaking several bones in my ankle area!”