Picture Courtesy of Google Maps StreetView
A woman suffering a serious medical condition needed to be rescued from her 9th story flat.
The woman has a known medical condition and when the ER24 ambulance was called to the block of flats at the corners of Minaar and Prinsloo in Pretoria CBD, the paramedics were told that the woman is chronically ill. As they got to the 12 story building, they realised that the lifts were not working.
When they got to the woman, after climbing 9 flights of stairs with their medical equipment, she was struggling to breathe and had a severe pain in her chest. They treated the woman for her immediate medical needs and brought a chair in which they would try and carry her down the stairs to the ambulance.
Other paramedics in the area were called to assist with carrying the woman down the 9 flights of stairs. Once they had reached the 6th level of the building, the woman’s condition had started to deteriorate further and they were forced to stop the process of physically carrying the woman down. They decided that they would rather stabilise her where they were and as best they could while the High Angle Rescue Team were called in.
The rescue team arrived within minutes and they began rigging a pulley system onto the side of the building. The woman was then placed into a rescue basket and was abseiled down the side of the building to where the ambulance was waiting.
The woman was further stabilised and transported to Life The Little Company of Mary hospital in a critical but stable condition.
The entire call took approximately 4 hours to complete. Though this sounds like an eternity, the paramedics’ treatment and the assistance from the Rescue Team got the woman to the appropriate medical facility so that she could be further cared for without compromising the woman’s already serious medical condition.
Vanessa Jackson, ER24