Former firefighter rescued after hang glider crash in Tulare County

TULARE COUNTY, Calif. – A 71-year-old retired firefighter was rescued from a paraglider crash in the Springville area of ​​Tulare County on Tuesday afternoon.

First responders said when the 911 call came in around 5 p.m., the exact location was unknown.

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Reach Air Medical Service of Porterville was on scene when it all happened and was instrumental in this rescue along with Tulare County first responders.

According to the rescue team, everything went well, from the victim's awareness after the accident to the emergency call and locating the victim in the middle of nowhere.

Can't you guess what else fits together perfectly? They tell FOX26 that the accident victim was taken to a hospital where his daughter works.

The crew tells me they found this out while they were already underway.

They said it was a pretty cool result.

Reach Air Medical Services flight paramedic Tarin Tackett said: “We're just lucky he had the right radios, the right GPS and was able to call himself because if he wasn't able to do that.” It might have been hours before anyone knew he was there.”

Tino Flores, the pilot who flew in that day, said the same thing.

“Oh man, our biggest worry too was that the sun was definitely going to set and all I remember was him wearing a thin long sleeve shirt and some shorts. It would have been quite difficult to navigate this terrain to get there.” “Surely without the helicopter,” he emphasized.

Tackett shares that no one had seen him when they arrived.

“They were all at the base of a mountain, sort of looking up, and we flew over the ridgeline at the top and saw that he was on the other side. So all we could tell ground resources was where it actually was, and that's at the speed it's quite high,” he said.

Flores says the man crashed in the middle of nowhere.

They told me it was a pretty remote area and there was a lot of difficult terrain to walk through.

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As soon as they discovered him, they provided medical care and other agencies took over the task after they climbed to the mountain peak.

He was taken to hospital for his injuries.

Tackett said: “He was in a lot of pain. But he asked if I could take his cell phone and call his wife.

So he did it. He says she asked which hospital they were taking him to.

When he answered where, his wife said their daughter worked there.

Flores said, “We rarely, at least for me, come across a scenario where we actually have a patient and we're transporting them to a trauma center where there's actually a family member or, you know, significant other who's in that facility.” works.” . I thought that was really cool and especially that the father actually got it.”

REACH Air Medical Services Program Director Danny Goranson said, “…great work from everyone, the ambulance, the fire department communications, you know everything is very well coordinated on this call.”

The rescue crew told FOX26 that the accident victim told them he didn't know if he had bad wind, but his glider essentially gave up when he was 200 feet in the air, inflating and losing air what led to his fall.

Reach Air Medical Services said it took less than ten minutes to respond to the helicopter call.

Add up the minutes to find it and the climb, which took about 30 to 40 minutes total.