This article is from page 12 of the 2012-05-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 12 JPG
A CLIMBER narrowly escaped serious injury on Saturday after a large rock, dislodged by another climber, fell on him from the top of a climbing cliff in North Clare.
The climber, who was holding a safety rope for another climber at the time, broke his femur in the incident but escaped a life-threatening injury by a matter of millimetres. The men were climbing at a popular climbing wall at Ballyreen, just north of Doolin, when the accident took place.
The Doolin unit of the Irish Coast- guard received the call just after 2.30pm on Saturday afternoon and rushed to the scene where they located the injured man at the bottom of a high cliff. They reached the injured man and helped make him comfortable until the arrival of the paramedics, splinting his injured leg. A winch was lowered to the bottom of the cliff and the injured climber was then stretchered to the shoreline.
From the shoreline, the injured man was airlifted by the Shannon-based Coast Guard Rescue Helicopter to Limerick Regional Hospital for further treatment. He is expected to make a full recovery.
“He had a broken femur and was very lucky that it was not a more serious incident. The femur is the strongest bone in your body and there is a big risk of severing a major artery and bleeding to death in a situation like this,” said Mattie Shannon of the Doolin Unit of the Irish Coastguard.
“We were able to reach him along with the HSE paramedics and he received medical attention. He was in a lot of pain but he was conscious throughout the rescue.”
Meanwhile, a body was recovered from the water around Poll Cnaimhín, north of Doolin, early on Saturday morning.