Netcare 911 rescuers were faced with a poser when a worker injured his spine 16 storeys up at a construction site at the Pavilion in Durban. The man was critically injured after he had fallen about three metres “onto a concrete slab about 50m above the ground”‚ and getting him down required “a tricky one-hour operation involving a high-angle rescue with the aid of a construction crane”. “When our team arrived on scene the patient was lying the equivalent of some 16 storeys above ground level‚ and there were no stairs or easy means of getting him safely down from the building‚” said Netcare 911’s Gary Paul. “The paramedics also had to take into account the fact that the patient’s spine may have been damaged during his fall and therefore did not want to move him unnecessarily.” The paramedics stabilised the victim‚ but‚ “realising that a high-angle rescue system would be necessary to bring the patient down to the ground level they decided to call for the urgent assistance of Netcare 911’s rescue team‚ Rescue 2”‚ said Paul.A Rescue 2 officer “was able to safely secure the injured‚ but by now stabilised‚ patient into a specialised rescue stretcher called a Stokes basket”‚ and his colleagues on the ground “elicited the assistance of on-site construction personnel and a construction crane in order to bring the patient safely down to the waiting ambulance”...