A Wales Air Ambulance crew who saved a badly-injured climber from the foot of sea cliffs as the tide threatened to drown them has been nominated for a top award.
The nomination has come from a fellow air ambulance paramedic, Mark Timmins, a member of the North Wales Air Ambulance crew, who was, himself, voted the UK Paramedic of the Year last year for the daring rescue of a man stranded in the River Dee.
He said: “This was an incredibly brave rescue that made me proud to be a Welsh Ambulance Service paramedic and a member of an air ambulance crew myself.
“They showed great courage, skill and presence of mind to get this man to safety and I’m delighted to be able to nominate them for a regional team award.”
The crew of the Swansea-based South Wales Air Ambulance carried out the rescue which saw paramedic Aneurin Heath battle pounding waves to save the life of a climber horrifically injured when he fell from seaside cliffs near Porthcawl.
Aneurin, from Carmarthen, paramedic supervisor at the Swansea-base, and his colleagues raced against time to get the patient off the beach as the inrushing tide threatened to swamp them.
He had suffered fractures to his spine, pelvis and both thighs after he fell over 40 feet onto rocks at Rest Bay, near Porthcawl, in November.
Aneurin said: “He had fractured his spine in several places, fractured his pelvis and both thighs and was bleeding internally – he’s lucky to be alive and that we found him so fast.”
The Air Ambulance, piloted by Grant Elgar and with Aneurin Heath and fellow paramedic Phil Thomas, from Tenby, aboard, were close by when the call came in after attending another beach call and Aneurin spotted the stricken climber among rocks at the foot of a cliff as they flew over.
“It was only that I was facing backwards that I glimpsed him,” he said: “He was in a small cove and we had to fly in really low and Grant did brilliantly to hover with one of the skids just resting on a rock so I could clamber off and get down to him.
“I managed to get a line into him and give him some morphine. He was lying in the water with me and the tide was coming in fast.
“The Coastguard officer and the patient’s girlfriend climbed down to us.
“We were up to our waists in water and I had managed to get the spinal board under him and balance him on a rock and by now the waves were crashing into me but the RAF Sea King had arrived too and the winchman came down and as he did a wave smashed right over us.
“At that stage we just had to lift him, despite his injuries, because otherwise he might have drowned.
“I had managed to put my equipment bag on a rock and grabbed it and it was OK but we needed to get him off the beach straight away and the Sea King lifted him off and up onto the cliff where there were hundreds of people watching.
“The fact that he was wet and hypothermic probably saved him because in cases like this it helps to lower the body temperature and then raise it again gradually in hospital.
“It was getting pretty dangerous in that cove. The water level rose very quickly and although there was a lifeboat it couldn’t come in because of the way the waves were crashing against the rocks – I don’t dare think what might have happened if we hadn’t got there so quickly.
“The Sea King was out of fuel then. It had been on two jobs and was on its way back to RAF Chivenor but we got him and his girlfriend into the Air Ambulance and flew them to Morriston.
“Everything I was wearing was ruined and I was soaked and frozen but amazingly my bag had done its job and everything in it was fine.”
Footage of the dramatic rescue
Photograph: Wales Air Ambulance paramedics Aneurin Heath, left, team leader South Wales Air Ambulance, and Phil Thomas
