Residents help rescue injured tourist from Tamana Bat Cave

[hydroep]

Well done!

Tamana residents help rescue injured tourist
Peter Christopher

Res­i­dents of Guaico Tamana, in East Trinidad, helped res­cue a tourist on Mon­day af­ter she faint­ed and fell 30 feet while vis­it­ing a cave in the dis­trict.

Ger­man na­tion­al Ul­rike Frenk­ing, 65, was part of a small group vis­it­ing the Tamana Bat Cave at around 6 pm when she said she col­lapsed close to a hole in the cave.

Mem­bers of the group were able to con­tact res­i­dents who were in­volved in the ini­tial res­cue at­tempt.

That res­cue, how­ev­er, would span over three hours, as the vil­lagers with the help of fire of­fi­cers and the Po­lice Ser­vice’s Cen­tral Di­vi­sion res­cue unit.

Frenk­ing was fi­nal­ly re­moved from the cave and tak­en for med­ical treat­ment around 11.10 pm.

The ef­forts of the res­i­dents were recog­nised on so­cial me­dia, with one Face­book user Gail Ann Per­rotte prais­ing the ef­forts of the res­i­dents. “They risked their lives,” Per­rotte said on the post.

Emer­gency of­fi­cials con­firmed she had suf­fered a dis­lo­cat­ed right leg in the fall.

Frenk­ing, who is stay­ing in St Joseph dur­ing his vis­it to the coun­try, was tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ence Com­plex.

She was said to be in a sta­ble con­di­tion at the hos­pi­tal up to Tues­day morn­ing.

The bat cave is an at­trac­tion at Mt Tamana lies on the east­ern edge of the Cen­tral Range, south of San­gre Grande.

The moun­tain which stands at just over 1,000 feet, ac­cord­ing to the web­site Des­ti­na­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go, has sev­er­al carved in­tri­cate cave sys­tems.

Ac­cord­ing to the site, the tour has been fea­tured on the in­ter­na­tion­al ca­ble chan­nel Dis­cov­ery and Na­tion­al Ge­o­graph­ic as well as the BBC.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/tamana-residents-help-rescue-injured-tourist-6.2.784323.03b6d5f856