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Posted: 27-01-2009 18:29 Post subject:

You're not safe in your own home!

Man trapped by sofa sipped whisky

A man who became trapped beneath his sofa for two days said he survived by sipping from a bottle of whisky.

Joe Galliott, 65, lost his bearings during a power cut at his home in Yeovil, Somerset, and fell against the three-seater which toppled onto him.

Because of back problems, he was unable to free his 19-stone frame and remained stuck for 60 hours until a neighbour spotted him through the curtains.

He said a bottle of whisky, which had rolled within reach, kept him going.

"The whole settee tipped over catching me like a rat in a trap," he said

"I took a sip of [the whisky] and thought, well this isn't too bad."

But after several hours without food or water, he admits, he became quite worried.

"It felt like a lifetime, you think you're there forever," he said.

The alarm was raised by a neighbour who had peered through the window, after becoming concerned that Mr Galliott's curtains had not been drawn for two days.

He spent five days recovering in hospital after his ordeal earlier this month.

Mr Galliott said he was keeping another bottle of whisky by the sofa "just in case."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/7853328.stm

Posted: 27-01-2009 18:58 Post subject:

Hmmm, I reckon its more likely that he got trapped because he was already drinking the whisky.

Posted: 27-01-2009 19:08 Post subject:

While balancing the sofa on its end.

Posted: 21-09-2009 11:44 Post subject:

Crash victim survives for 5 days in Rocky Mountains by sucking water from hair into her mouth
By Mail Foreign Service

A woman survived five days in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains despite having 11 broken ribs, a punctured lung and several broken vertebrae.

Rescuers said Cynthia Hoover had a 'heck of a will to live' after they found her barely alive following a car crash.

During the rain, sleet, snow and freezing temperatures, the 52-year- old, who was barely able to move, stayed alive by draining the water from her hair into her mouth.

Miss Hoover was eventually discovered after she managed to crawl 450 yards to where she heard voices coming from a disused gold mine.

Rescuers said her mouth was full of dirt from where she had dragged herself along the ground.

Miss Hoover is recovering in a hospital in Denver, Colorado.

Fire chief Gary Allen,who took part in her rescue, said: 'She had a heck of a will to live.

'What amazed me was she survived the rain, fog, sleet and hail.

'We have mountain lions, bears and other critters up here. It is a miracle she wasn't mauled to death.'

Miss Hoover said she had armed herself with a golf club to protect herself if wild animals approached.

She had been driving across the 8,600ft mountains near Central City in Colorado when she swerved to avoid a deer.

Her VW Passat plunged more than 350ft down a hill and overturned on to its roof.

The wrecked car was hidden from the road by thick undergrowth.

Authorities said she was not reported missing as she often took solo journeys across the mountain roads.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1214928/Woman-survives-5-days-Rocky-mountains-horrific-crash-ordeal.html#ixzz0RjjQDVTA

Posted: 10-10-2009 09:39 Post subject:

Trapped man cut off own leg after Indonesian earthquake
A young man hacked off his own leg using a blunt hoe and then a saw after he became trapped in rubble following the Indonesian earthquake, the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) revealed on Friday.
Published: 12:02AM BST 10 Oct 2009

The construction worker, called Ramlan, was trapped in rubble when a concrete girder crushed his right leg up to the shin.

Fearing aftershocks, the 18-year-old decided his only means of escape was to cut off a leg and he grabbed a hoe.

Ramlan hacked at his leg but the instrument was too blunt to cut through to the bone.

Other workers had fled in panic in the aftermath of the quake, which hit the island of Sumatra on September 30.

But Ramlan was able to use his mobile to phone a friend, who returned to the scene in the capital of Padang.

Ramlan was handed a wood saw and continued the task until the pain became too great. His friend then finished the amputation.

The young man was rushed to Yos Sudarso Catholic hospital, where doctors cleaned his wound and made a further amputation slightly further up.

He told his story to the charity Caritas, an international partner of DEC member Cafod.

Brendan Gormley, chief executive of the DEC, said: "Ramlan's actions were extraordinary and the courage and determination he showed is typical of many survivors with whom we are working.

"After the earthquakes in Indonesia, and the typhoons in the Philippines and Vietnam, survivors would have been the first to help themselves and others.

"Now they urgently need international support, including that being provided by DEC members and partners who are bringing in urgently-needed aid and medical supplies."

...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/indonesia/6286183/Trapped-man-cut-off-own-leg-after-Indonesian-earthquake.html

Posted: 11-06-2010 09:16 Post subject:

Man cuts off arm trying to escape from furnace
A man trapped for two days in his basement with his left arm stuck in a broken furnace attempted to cut it off to escape.
Published: 12:26AM BST 11 Jun 2010

Jonathan Metz, 31, fashioned a tourniquet near his shoulder and began cutting when he began to smell rotting flesh. He made it almost all the way through, but was not able to free himself.

He was rescued Wednesday after three days in his West Hartford basement when worried friends called police, and firefighters cut the furnace apart.

Doctors said the attempted self-amputation probably saved his life, preventing the infection in his gangrenous arm from spreading to the rest of his body.

"There was a little bit of fat that remained and he was in and out of consciousness," said Dr. Scott Ellner, Mr Metz' surgeon at Hartford's Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center. "It sounds like maybe there was a nerve there that prevented him from completing the amputation."

Mr Metz, who lives alone, had been working to replace the boiler fins on his furnace Sunday when his arm became trapped, officials said.

A friend, Luca DiGregorio, said he and other friends grew worried when he did not show up for work and missed a Tuesday night softball game.

Mr Metz also did not answer the doorbell when DiGregorio stopped at his home Wednesday, where he said he saw Metz's beagle, Porsche, "yipping at the back door." He called police, who found[Metz] in the basement.

"I was a little worried, especially when the first cop showed up," Mr DiGregorio said. "Then more showed up, and then the ambulance showed up, so it got a little nerve-racking."

Firefighters ripped apart the furnace with heavy tools, including a spreader normally used to take the door off a car, West Hartford Fire Chief Matt Stuart said.

Once they did so, the arm "just gave away, because his arm was already infected and the tissue was nonviable," Dr Ellner said.

Officials didn't know what type of tools Metz used to attempt the amputation. He was mumbling during the rescue operation, officials noted.

Dr Ellner said Mr Metz drank some of the water that had leaked from the furnace to help him stay alive.

Dr David Shapiro, a trauma specialist who also worked on Metz, said he could not have lived much longer.

"I've never experienced somebody who had the ability to go through something like this," Dr Ellner said. "He provides a lot of inspiration for myself, not just as a physician but as a human being."

Infection remains a concern, but Mr Metz was expected to survive. He will have to undergo more surgery to prepare the arm for a prosthetic, Ellner said. That will involve removing more tissue that may not be healthy, and then grafting skin and muscle onto the remaining bone, he said.

"We basically told him that he's going to go back to doing the things he did before, his athletics, his woodworking, his job," he said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7819637/Man-cuts-off-arm-trying-to-escape-from-furnace.html

Posted: 27-07-2010 17:01 Post subject:

Posted: 23-08-2010 08:08 Post subject:

Miners trapped in Chile mine for 17 days are alive

Thirty-three miners who have been trapped underground in a Chilean mine for the past 17 days are all alive, President Sebastian Pinera has said.

Rescuers heard hammering noises when they sent a new probe into the mine.

When the probe came back it had a note tied to it saying: "All 33 of us are fine in the shelter."

The men were working at a depth of around 700m (2,300ft) at the San Jose mine, near the city of Copiapo, when the rock above them collapsed.

Until Sunday, there had been no word from the miners and hopes for their survival had all but faded.

But it could take several months to drill a rescue shaft large enough to rescue the men. Shocked

Mr Pinera was at the mine on Sunday when he announced the breakthrough. Brandishing the miners' note for TV cameras he hailed the news saying:

"It will take months to get them out. It will take time, but it doesn't matter how long it takes, to have a happy ending."

President Pinera said he had seen footage of the men waving at a camera inserted into their shelter through a small tube.

"They got close to the camera and we could see their eyes, their joy," he said.

The miners are reported to be 4.5 miles (7km) inside the gold and copper mine and about 700m vertically underground.

They have been trapped since 5 August when the main access tunnel collapsed.

According to Reuters news agency, the authorities said the men are in a mine shaft shelter about the size of a small flat and have limited amounts of food.

Rescuers plan to send narrow plastic tubes down the borehole with food, hydration gels and communications equipment, including cameras and microphones.

However, the chief engineer in charge of the rescue operation, Andres Sougarret, has warned that it will take at least four months and more powerful digging equipment to reach the men.

"A shaft 66 cm (26 inches) in diameter will take at least 120 days," he said.

On Saturday relatives of the trapped men had accused the authorities of not doing enough to reach the men.

One of their complaints was that officials had so far insisted on using probes to locate the miners, rather than digging tunnels through which they could be rescued.

Many of the trapped men's relatives have been camped outside the mine since the tunnel collapse occurred.

There were jubilant scenes as the news that contact had been made broke.

"We never, never lost faith. We knew they were there, and that they would be rescued," one relative, Eduardo Hurtado, said.

"For the first time, I'll be able to sleep peacefully," said the daughter of Mario Gomez, one of the trapped miners.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11054376

Posted: 07-09-2010 09:38 Post subject:

French grandmother survives six days after falling down Alpine ravine
A 78-year-old French grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s disease survived for nearly a week after falling down a ravine on a walk in an Alpine forest before being found.
Published: 12:39AM BST 07 Sep 2010

Michele Riotton said she remembers having “slipped into a ravine and then falling asleep” while on a walk through a forest after leaving her home in the village of Armoy on August 29.

Dressed in a light jacket, she spent six nights out in the open and had nothing to eat the whole time except two biscuits that had been stuffed in a pocket and just rainwater that ran down her face to drink. She kept herself warm by covering herself with leaves.

I wasn’t afraid,” said Riotton. “I thought mostly about the worry I was causing my children and grandchildren.”

A two-day search, including a helicopter, had been mounted for Riotton, without success.

A second search was conducted on Saturday, which found her lying at the bottom of a steep ravine in a pile of leaves just 700 metres from her home, suffering from bruises on her hands and dehydration.

“We didn’t want to abandon the family, even if it’s true deep inside we held little hope of finding her alive. It is a miracle,” said resident Patrice Frossard, who complained that the search had been called off too soon.

Mrs Riotton, speaking from her hospital bed in the French Alpine town of Thonon-les-Bains, said she had now had enough of forests and wanted to “go to a retirement home”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7985776/French-grandmother-survives-six-days-after-falling-down-Alpine-ravine.html

Posted: 24-11-2010 11:27 Post subject:

Another French granny:

Grandmother survives on water after she's locked in bathroom for THREE WEEKS... and neighbours ignored her banging
By Ian Sparks
Last updated at 9:54 AM on 24th November 2010

A French pensioner spent three weeks locked in her own bathroom after the lock snapped behind her on November 1.
The 69-year-old grandmother survived on tap water in the windowless room before a concerned neighbour finally alerted police.
Residents in her apartment building in Essonne, near Paris, said they had heard banging in the middle of the night, but thought it was simply 'noisy workmen'.

Neighbours alerted the authorities when they noticed something at the pensioner's door had gone unclaimed for ten days.
A police spokesman said: "We broke into the flat and heard noises so broke the bathroom door down.
'The lock had snapped off and she was trapped. There were no windows and no way out.
'She was badly mal-nourished and in a state of shock and has been taken to hospital to recover from her ordeal.'
She is expected to recover.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1332395/Grandmother-survives-water-locked-bathroom-3-WEEKS.html#ixzz16C6Utb2A

Dozy neighbours... Evil or Very Mad

Posted: 25-11-2010 11:31 Post subject:

Three Samoan teenagers rescued after 50 days adrift at sea in tiny boat
Three Samoan teenagers have survived 50 days adrift in the Pacific Ocean, being found alive by a tuna fishing vessel long after their families had given them up for dead.
By Bonnie Malkin, Christchurch 9:45AM GMT 25 Nov 2010

The youths, two aged 15 and one aged 14, had disappeared on Oct 5 in a tiny aluminium boat from the remote Atafu Atoll.

The trio were presumed to have drowned after unsuccessful searches by the New Zealand Air Force and Samoa had held a memorial service in their honour.

But, in a remarkable stroke of luck, the teenagers were spotted on Wednesday by a New Zealand tuna fishing boat which was far off its usual course.

Samuel Perez and Filo Filo, both 15 and Edward Nasau, 14, had drifted 800 miles and were in waters northeast of Fiji when they were rescued.

The first mate of the fishing boat the San Nikunau said that the boys had only eaten one seabird and a couple of coconuts during their time at sea.

In the days before their miraculous rescue, they had started drinking seawater, because it had not rained for some time, and would not have survived much longer, he said.

However, the teens had sustained surprisingly few injuries during their ordeal. They were thin and sunburnt, but otherwise fairly healthy and in good spirits.

"We got to them in a miracle," Tai Fredricsen, first mate of the San Nikunau, said.
"Yesterday we saw a small vessel, a little speed boat on our bows, and we knew it was a little weird," he told the Fairfax website Stuff.co.nz

Mr Fredricsen said the boat was initially spotted when it was about a mile off the bow.
"We had enough smarts to know there were people in it and those people were not supposed to be there."
"I pulled the vessel up as close as I could to them and asked them if they needed any help ... they said 'very much so'. They were ecstatic to see us."

Luckily, the San Nikunau had a medical officer on-board, who knew not to feed the trio too quickly. Instead they were put on a drip before slowly being given sips of water and small pieces of fruit that their bodies could absorb.

Soon they were strong enough to eat a full "kiwi breakfast", Mr Fredricsen said.

The boys are expected to be put ashore at Suva, the Fijian capital, in the next 24 hours where they will be checked at a hospital.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/samoa/8159081/Three-Samoan-teenagers-rescued-after-50-days-adrift-at-sea-in-tiny-boat.html

Posted: 25-11-2010 13:20 Post subject:

What a great story. Their mums'll want to hug them and spank them in equal measure! Laughing

Posted: 24-03-2011 15:16 Post subject:

Factory worker survives being dragged through five-inch gap in machinery that broke his back, pelvis, arm, hips and ribs
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 8:55 AM on 24th March 2011

A factory worker was dragged through a five-inch gap in a steel processing machine - and lived to tell the tale.
As father-of-one Matthew Lowe went through the machine, his back was broken in two places, his pelvis was shattered, both hips and several ribs were fractured and his stomach and bowel were ruptured.
The only sound Matthew heard as his body was torn apart was his right arm snapping. Shocked

He was so badly hurt in the accident that his partner was told to 'expect the worst' when she arrived at the hospital where he was taken.
But two years after the near-death experience, Matthew's only visible sign of injury is a weakened right arm.
X-rays show how much metal surgeons had to put into the 25-year-old's body to pin him back together again.

Yesterday, Matthew, from Birdwell, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, said: 'I still don't know how I didn't die.
'As the machine dragged me through I just relaxed because I knew I couldn't do anything and I thought that was the end for me.'

Astonishingly, the machine dragged him all the way through, before depositing him on the floor with his clothes in tatters.
It was then that the pain hit him and other workers raced to help him after hearing his screams.

Matthew, who was a plate welder at the time, was taken to hospital in Barnsley where surgeons stabilised his injuries until he was later transferred to the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield for further treatment.
In all, he spent a month in hospital and had to have six operations to pin his broken limbs back together again.

Although he now suffers occasional panic attacks because of his ordeal, Matthew said: 'I am very lucky to be alive.
'I don't really know how I managed to survive being dragged through such a tiny gap.
'Luckily my head went through a bigger gap before my body was dragged through what was a gap no wider than a CD case.'

Matthew was working at Compass Engineering's factory at Barugh near Barnsley, the firm he had worked for since leaving school, when he was injured shortly before Christmas 2008.
He had been working on a computer-controlled conveyor which moves metal into the factory when he was dragged into it.

He said: 'I was walking away when my overalls were caught up in the machinery and I was pulled backwards.
'My head went one side of the machine but my body was dragged sideways through a gap just five inches wide.

'As soon as the machine got me I knew what was going to happen to I just relaxed and hoped for the best. There was nothing I could do to get away, I was completely trapped.
'In the end it crushed my body, ripped my clothes to shreds and literally spat me out at the other end, but I was still alive.
'I don't know how but I didn't lose consciousness, I just couldn't see for a while afterwards.
'There was no one else in that part of the factory so no could help me. It was only when I fell to the floor and started screaming that two workmen outside came to help me.'

After recovering from his injuries Matthew went back to work at Compass 18 months after the accident and is now training to be a site supervisor.
His partner teaching assistant Kim Swift, 29, mother of their daughter Evie,5, said: 'When I got to the hospital I was told to expect the worst because Matthew was so badly hurt.
'His face was purple and swollen and the whites of his eyes were electric red.
'Despite being so badly injured Matthew was awake and quite alert. It wasn't until later I discovered he had been dragged through this machine.'

Yesterday, there was no one available at Compass Engineering available to comment.
Compass and the German company that installed the conveyor system, used for moving heavy steel beams, are due to face magistrates in Barnsley today.
They are accused of breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act over claims that the machine did not have a safety guard to protect workers from moving parts.
It is expected that the case will be adjourned for about a month.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369381/Factory-worker-survives-dragged-inch-gap-machinery-broke-pelvis-hips-ribs.html#ixzz1HWgol54o

Posted: 09-04-2011 08:45 Post subject:

Posted: 07-05-2011 15:14 Post subject:

Missing tourist Rita Chretien found alive in Nevada

A Canadian tourist missing in a remote wooded area of the US state of Nevada for seven weeks has been found alive near her stranded vehicle by hunters.
Rita Chretien, 56, told police her van had got stuck in mud in mid-March, and that her husband Albert, 59, had gone to get help on foot.
She said she had survived since then on "trail mix" snack food and water.

Police abandoned the search for the couple in April but have now resumed the hunt for Mr Chretien.
The couple were driving from their home in Penticton, British Columbia, to Las Vegas, when they decided to go off-road to see the landscape in Elko County, one of America's largest and most sparsely-populated counties.

One of their three sons, Raymond Chretien, said the family was "stunned" that their mother had been found alive.
"We haven't fully digested it. This is a miracle," he told the Portland Oregonian.
He said his mother, who lost 20-30lb (9-14kg) during her ordeal and is now recovering in hospital, doubted if she would have survived another three days in the woods.
She had apologised for the worry she had caused her relatives, he added.

Officials said weather over the past month in the area where the couple got lost had included snow, rain and chilly temperatures.
"I don't believe they were prepared for winter weather," Raymond Chretien said. "They don't go camping."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13320977