BELOW SUPERNAV drop zone ⇩

Missing woman found dangling off steep slope

MAIN AREA TOP drop zone ⇩

MAIN AREA TOP drop zone ⇩

RENO, Nev. (NewsNation Now) — Authorities are calling it nothing short of a miracle. A 64-year-old woman was found clinging to a tree on a steep slope in Nevada nearly 12 hours after she was reported missing.

The victim’s son’s friend found her dangling hundreds of feet off the ground before she was pulled to safety.

“He decided just to go look down this hill for no real reason, call out and heard her say ‘help’,'” Seth Williams, a battalion chief with the Reno Fire Department, said Wednesday on NewsNation Prime. “And that was the last word she said. She was completely effectively catatonic after that.”

Williams helped with the rescue, along with about 20 firefighters and paramedics.

“She was in pretty bad shape,” Williams said. “The bystanders had given her a bunch of blankets but she almost completely stopped shivering, which is a bad sign in terms of hypothermia.”

Williams said she also suffered injuries to her legs and lost a shoe.

“She’d been fighting back for a while.” Williams said.

He said the area was so steep that one of the firefighters fell and broke his thumb.

“Where she was hiking was a relatively common hiking area,” Williams said. “Although where she was found was a very unusual area, very steep, you know, something you might consider similar to a double diamond ski run.”

The low angle rope rescue took slightly more than 30 minutes, with responders dragging the victim up the slope in a basket.

Williams said she made a full recovery and has been released from a hospital.

“For firefighters, we go on way too many recoveries,” Williams said. “So (it’s great) to have a successful thing where you get to rescue somebody who is in bad shape, get them quickly to the ambulance, get them warmed up.”

His advice to others going out into the wilderness: Always take your cellphone with you.

“It’s a huge asset for emergency responders,” Williams said. “We can triangulate off the phone and even get specific coordinates.”

West

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

Site Settings Survey

 

MAIN AREA MIDDLE drop zone ⇩

Trending on NewsNation

MAIN AREA BOTTOM drop zone ⇩

tt

KC Chiefs parade shooting: 1 dead, 21 shot including 9 kids | Morning in America

Witness of Chiefs parade shooting describes suspect | Banfield

Kansas City Chiefs parade shooting: Mom of 2 dead, over 20 shot | Banfield

WWE star Ashley Massaro 'threatened' by board to keep quiet about alleged rape: Friend | Banfield

Friend of WWE star: Ashley Massaro 'spent hours' sobbing after alleged rape | Banfield

Sunny

la

66°F Sunny Feels like 66°
Wind
7 mph SW
Humidity
47%
Sunrise
Sunset

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Low near 50F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
50°F Partly cloudy. Low near 50F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
Wind
6 mph NNW
Precip
10%
Sunset
Moon Phase
Waxing Gibbous