Episode 15 Real Rescues

Today on Real Rescues...

a delicate rescue operation in the treetops.

HE YELLS

A parachutist is stuck 60 feet up.

Alfio is having a stroke.

A drug could radically minimise the effects

but is he well enough to be given it?

We're just making a decision about thrombolysis now

but he'll definitely have to come to the stroke unit.

And a 999 call in the early hours, there's a fire in a house.

A couple are trapped.

Hello and welcome to Real Rescues

and to the work of Britain's emergency services.

Services which respond to our

30 million 999 calls every year.

The staff in here know that when lives may be at stake,

it's vital no time is lost.

Christchurch in Dorset.

An ambulance is heading to one of the most urgent calls -

a patient with a stroke. On board, Simon Trenchard.

He's a senior paramedic who usually works alone.

Today he's providing emergency cover alongside paramedic Wendy Woolgar.

The crew don't yet have full details

but a first responder is already at the house.

Their patient is in his 70s.

His symptoms are classic indicators of a stroke.

He's moved to the ambulance immediately.

Few bumps as we come in. One, two, three.

The patient is Alfio.

He's lost strength in his left arm and his speech is slurred.

She's in the front of the ambulance. We've got her in there already, OK?

Alfie, I'm here.

See, there she is. You can hear her in the front.

This is the plan, we'll get the door shut at the back as well...

All Alfio is worrying about is his wife Elena.

She's recently been diagnosed with a serious illness

and he's her main carer.

But now everyone needs to focus on Alfio.

I think this is quite new today.

The symptoms you're having with your speech problems

and the weakness in your arm is you're having a stroke.

Don't struggle.

The good news is we can take you straight to hospital

and do something about it, hopefully.

OK? We'll get you sorted. Don't get upset for me, OK?

First, Simon confirms the stroke diagnosis by running through

some standard checks.

I know you don't feel like doing this at all,

but can you just give me a big smile for a second?

Real big smile and show me your teeth.

OK. Can you say, "Hello, Simon" for me?

ALFIO SLURS SPEECH

I know you're struggling and I'm not being rude, at all.

It's just telling me that there's a problem with your speech.

You know what's going on, you're just not able to control yourself.

What I want to do, Alfio, is take you to a specialist part of the hospital.

The severity of a stroke can be minimised with a clot

dissolving treatment called thrombylisis.

But there is only a small window of opportunity

and not everybody is suitable.

We have a checklist that we're going through because we're so close.

Arm and leg. It's left arm. No loss of consciousness?

No seizure, was there? No. Pulse is 66, irregular.

Can you hold your arms out for me in a straight line, Alfio?

OK. Can you squeeze my hand for me?

Squeeze this one. You're not able to, are you? Don't worry.

Can you lift this right leg for me? Good man. Down again.

Can you lift your left leg for me?

That is good, so you have some strength in your left leg. OK, good.

You haven't had a stroke in the past or any problems with

bleeds in your head, no?

Things are going well until paramedic Wendy makes a discovery.

Did you have a head injury in the past?

It's a brain tumour about 20 years ago.

You had a brain tumour 20 years ago.

But everything's fine.

It's a worrying development.

It could mean Alfio is not suitable for the special stroke treatment.

Yes, really, if we've had head things in the past.

So I'm going to put that as an exclusion.

But Simon wants to give Alfio the best chance possible.

He phones ahead to the unit.

The only thing I have a bit of an exclusion on the thrombolysis

is he had a brain tumour 20 years ago.

But other than that everything else is in a no box and good for straight to

CT, so I'd like to do a straight to CT scan if we can activate the team.

To the scanner we'll be about eight minutes. Zero-eight minutes.

Simon gets the go ahead. Brilliant, thanks very much.

Cheers, bye.

OK, good news.

What we're going to do, Alfio,

is take you straight to the CT scanner

so they can give you a picture of your brain

and hopefully do something with what's happening at the moment.

And improve your condition, OK?

You might hear some noise with the sirens in a second.

It's just to push us through the first bit of traffic.

Now it's Elena who's worrying about Alfio.

So this morning you just went into your kitchen

and then your left side just gave out on you.

And you ended up on the floor. That's what your wife heard.

She heard the bang next door

and then she came in and found you, as we have, on the floor.

The reality of the situation is hitting home.

Alfio, listen, it's happened. We need to get you through this.

You need to be strong, OK?

Your wife is with us.

She's OK. She's helping with the directions in the front.

She's all right. She's strong. Alfio.

I know, buddy. She's being really strong, OK?

Are you worried about not being able to help her?

Let's not even think about that yet.

Let's get today out of the way, yeah?

Let's see where we stand. Yeah?

Is that fair enough? Let's see where we stand

and see what damage has been done and what can be recovered.

All right? We're coming to the hospital now.

I'm going to start unplugging all these things.

Do you want to take her to the relatives room, Wendy?

Yeah, when I come back. Cool.

Alfio is taken into the hospital where they'll be able to decide

if treatment can go ahead.

It's a very powerful drug, sir.

Doctors talk Alfio through the treatment.

Now he has to make the choice.

The sooner we give it, the better it will be for you.

The traffic police are on duty in Milton Keynes.

Ambulance arrived yet. Any updates on injuries?

PCs Mat Waters and Ben Taylor are heading to an emergency

call in one of the town's suburbs.

Basically, we received a report of a car versus a petal cycle.

12-year-old female cyclist has been hit by a car.

Ambulance are on the scene and we are en route.

It's one of the last days of the summer holidays

and approaching rush hour.

A potentially dangerous combination.

Even getting there, the traffic is causing problems.

Move over.

Watch out!

There we go. Right here. Straight ahead.

HE SIGHS

There's quite a crowd gathered by the ambulance.

How is everyone doing?

PC Mat is going to check out the casualty first.

It's a young boy who is being treated by the paramedics

at the side of the road.

Hello! Do you need a hand or anything?

Not at the moment. You're managing.

Who's the driver? You're the driver.

His bike has collided with the car.

Leaving quite a mark on the offside wing.

The driver is understandably very shaken.

Must be quite a shock. You got far to go?

No. Just taking my daughter to the doctors. But she's had to get a cab there.

Right, OK. Have you got your licence on you?

After such an impact, 12-year-old Tyrese could have sustained

significant internal injuries.

No pain in your hips at all?

He's not complaining

but the paramedics have to treat for the worst.

The board is immobilising his neck and back,

protecting his spine in case of hidden injuries.

Mat's checking the extent of the damage to the car.

This area's not secure.

The boy's mum has been contacted but she's at work

and it might be some time before she can get here.

OK, so just run that by me again.

Luckily, Lynne was driving very slowly when the accident happened.

She's not used to being the one giving details to police.

You're an ex-police officer? Oh, no.

Special. Nine years, Walton.

Oh, OK. Don't fancy coming back, then? We're short staffed.

I'm too old. Do you want to do this?

The most obvious explanation for the collision is

the brakes on the bike failed.

Has the young lad said that his brakes had gone?

He said he didn't have any brakes.

All the children looked at his bike and pulled the hand grips.

How are you feeling? Now Mat needs to ask Tyrese what went wrong.

What happened?

OK.

The bike should give him some answers. Mat is taken under escort.

I just need to write some details down, you see.

What make and model it is.

The bike has been moved out of the way by a helpful neighbour.

Is it his bike, is it?

His friend just gave it to him today to fix up. OK.

Not very good at all, is it? No.

Needs a new MOT, I think. Yeah.

Missing vital rubbers.

Basically, what we know is this young lad has come down the hill

here on his mountain bike.

Appears for whatever reason his brakes are defective at the moment.

He's been unable to stop and he's hit a passing

vehicle on the driver's offside front wing causing a bit of a dent.

And he's received an injury to his ankle and his wrist.

So he'll go up to hospital.

And we'll catch up with him up there and get his account.

Other than that there's nothing more the driver could have done, really.

It's taking some time for Lynne to get over the shock of what's happened.

I am absolutely trembling. I'm shaking.

Never happened to me before.

But...he just absolutely came out of nowhere,

just hit me full side-on.

I heard this loud bang.

And just saw his shoulder and his head hit my windscreen.

But as long as he's OK. That's the main thing.

You're free to go now. Make sure you go home and have a nice cup of tea.

She'll have to make an insurance claim to fix the damage to her car.

Right, take care. I'll ring you a little bit later on. Take care.

And the signs are Tyrese has got off quite lightly.

He seems fine.

As it stands at the moment they don't suspect any

sort of serious injuries.

Possibly a sprain or soft tissue damage to his wrist.

But at the moment everything is precautionary.

They're going to check him

out over at the hospital to make sure there isn't anything underlying

but at the moment he seems to have got away reasonably well with it.

Lynne is off home for her much-needed cup of tea

and Tyrese is off to the hospital for a check-up.

OK. We're going up to the hospital to speak to his mum.

Are you saying, "Cup of tea?"

HE LAUGHS

The next call we're going to talk about is on the one side,

very frightening, on the other, hilarious

because it is amazing how stupid thieves

and burglars are on occasion. Let's start with the

frightening bit at the beginning. You get a phone call in about a robbery?

Yep, that's right. A burglary because it's in someone's house. So...

The caller had just come home.

She'd called upstairs because there was somebody up there.

She thought it was her family members, only to see a male run

downstairs, kick through the door and absolutely leg it out of her house.

So being a woman she chased after him. Which is brilliant.

We don't recommend you chase the burglars. No, not at all.

On this occasion she decided to.

So she followed the burglar out.

She managed to get a really good description,

a direction of travel and those are the really important things

that help officers when they get on the ground.

Where somebody's going and what they look like.

OK. So then you start to close a net in around the area, do you?

Yep, that's right.

Within two minutes we'd already dispatched officers on scene.

We'd dispatched a dog unit and that turned out to be really handy

because it was the dog that caught the scent of the burglar.

How did they catch the scent?

What happens is the dog will go to the scene and try to pick up a scent.

It then started to track the burglar.

The burglar had actually chucked the bag containing the items that

he'd stolen.

So the dog got a really good scent from the bag.

From the bag they managed to track him to where he actually was.

Right, but there was one other clue in the bag with the stolen

goods, wasn't there?

That's right.

Our burglar had actually left his wallet in the bag of stolen items!

THEY LAUGH

Which is... I know it's not a funny story but it kind of is, isn't it?

How stupid can you be? It's brilliant, on one hand.

I suppose. Very nice of him to make it that obvious.

Where did you find him in the end?

Our burglar isn't that bright because he turned out to be wedged

underneath the car which is where our dog tracked him to.

Marvellous.

It's quite reassuring when burglars are that stupid and easy to catch.

If only they were all that stupid and easy to catch. Absolutely.

Most of them aren't, but this one we had a brilliant description,

we had a dog that tracked him really well.

We had all the information that we need.

Better still he wedged himself somewhere he wasn't going to get free.

Or he couldn't get out and he left the wallet. Smashing.

Thank you very much for running us through the call.

The early hours of a Monday morning in the

Hampshire Fire and Rescue control room.

Call handler Lisa has just taken a 999 call. A house is on fire.

The emergency is happening at this terraced house in Portsmouth.

It's 2:30am. Young mum Samantha has been woken by the fire alarm.

Toxic gasses are filling the hallway, trapping her upstairs.

Samantha's husband Simon is downstairs in the thick smoke

trying to find a way out but the front door is locked.

Simon is desperately trying to find the keys in the smoke-filled darkness.

As soon as I understood what the situation was,

it was a case of trying to understand what was going on in the building,

who was with her and where the fire was in the property.

Desperately worried about his wife,

Simon's gone back upstairs where the two are now trapped.

Firefighters are en route

but now the couple are worrying about their pets.

Samantha's panicked cries for help are heard over the phone.

Call handler Lisa needs to keep her calm.

Finally, there's some relief for Samantha.

By getting her to describe what was going on it occupied her mind

and made her less panicky because she had a job to describe stuff to me.

And then it also helped me because she was being my eyes, as well.

So she could tell me what was going on so I could advise her

and the rest of the control room what the current situation was.

One of the first fire fighters at the scene is Paul Grant.

Immediately the A Crew have got the hose reel off

and started making entry into the ground floor to fight the fire.

Me and another couple of lads grabbed a ladder

and put it up to the first floor.

Assisted the lady down first, was then handed the dog.

And then the male occupant came down following that.

Went and found the second dog in the garden and brought him through.

Reunited them all together and took them

to a neighbours to look after them.

Four weeks on, the couple's house is still uninhabitable.

The seat of the fire was in the living room.

A dehumidifier left on overnight caught fire after developing

an electrical fault.

I remember hearing a noise and the first thing that hit me

was the smell.

I got out of bed and then I noticed the smoke.

It stung the eyes a little bit,

and at that point I turned round to Simon and said, "Get up."

Simon recalls opening the door onto the fire as he desperately

searched for the front door keys in a bid to escape.

I couldn't see flames, but there was a lot of smoke hit me

in the face, and I realised how serious things were at that point.

I shut the door again, of the living room,

and then realised at that point how dense it had

become in the hallway,

to the point where I could probably only see

about that far in front of me.

I had to actually crouch down and put the key to the door to

get it into the lock.

I managed it eventually, and got the door open.

And I, sort of, didn't quite know what to do at that point,

and thought, "I don't think Sam's going to be able to come down here."

Because it was too black.

Then I heard her scream at me to get back upstairs,

so I went back upstairs.

It almost seems silly that I went back up there,

but I wasn't comfortable leaving her on her own.

Samantha and Simon were treated at the scene for the effects

of smoke inhalation, but they know it could have been a lot worse.

Looking back on their terrifying ordeal,

Samantha is relieved their daughter Evelyn

was staying with her grandparents.

Our daughter was with my in-laws - with Simon's mum and dad.

So fortunate that she wasn't in the house when it caught fire.

Had she been in the property, I would have panicked a lot more.

And there could have been a very different outcome

if they hadn't had a smoke alarm installed.

If you don't have a smoke alarm fitted, obviously,

potentially the combustion, the smoke and the gasses

could have entered their bedroom and would have

probably just have overcome them before they even knew about it.

So, it could have been a much more tragic incident.

The firemen saved our lives.

If...

I don't want to think about...

what would have happened.

Still to come on Real Rescues...

A parachutist takes fright as fire and rescue begin lowering him

from the top of a 60-foot tree.

MAN SHOUTS

And on the motorway, wet weather is making driving difficult.

There's been a shunt and one man's suffering the after effects.

OK. Are you all right, sir? My name's Mark.

Do you?

76-year-old Alfio is having a stroke.

It's taken just eight minutes for the ambulance to get him to hospital,

where a specialist stroke team is on stand-by.

They may be able to reverse the effects of the stroke with

a treatment called thrombolysis, but it only works if the stroke is

caused by a blood clot, not if it's caused by a bleed on the brain.

The only way to be sure what's caused the stroke

is by looking at Alfio's brain with a CT scanner.

We'll see you in a minute, OK.

MACHINE BLEEPS

The first images start to come through.

MACHINE BLEEPS

We're just making a decision about the thrombolysis now,

but he'll have to come to the stroke unit.

In the ambulance,

Alfio told paramedics he'd had a brain tumour 20 years ago.

The stroke team need to discuss the implications.

They're concerned about a patch on the scan which could be a bleed,

the drug will make any bleed on the brain worse,

and that could be fatal.

After further scrutiny, they rule out any bleed on the brain.

Dr Damien Jenkinson explains what they've found.

We've done a brain scan which shows you've got the blockage

form of stroke.

One of the vessels on the right side is blocked,

affecting the body down the left side.

We have a treatment that helps clear out the blockage,

a clot-busting treatment, and we're keen to use that.

It would seem that you're suitable to have it - the time is right,

the blood pressure, everything else is favourable

and the brain scan is favourable.

I need to make sure you understand.

You're keen to have it done?

Yeah...

However, the drug can cause complications.

There is a small risk of it increasing bleeding into the brain.

Most people don't get that.

The sooner we give it, the better it will be for you.

Is there anything else you want to ask, me, sir, or tell me?

I have no doubt that you're suitable. Everything looks very favourable.

All right. You're in the right place with the right people.

There you go.

But Alfio's main worry is his wife Elena.

and who's going to look after her.

We'll speak to her and tell her what's happening.

You relax and let the drug work its business, all right?

All right? Happy?

OK. I'll see you back on ward.

All right, sir?

We'll see you on the stroke ward.

Yeah. Talk to him about it.

All right, sir. See you soon.

Now it's just a waiting game to see if the thrombolysis has worked.

I'm going to do some sips of water with you just to check

that your swallow's still safe

and nothing's going to go down the wrong way.

My dentures...

Later, Elena recalls her fears the moment Alfio collapsed.

I could hardly speak, I was all shaking and everything.

I assume that he's gone for good.

This next story is a sobering reminder of the dangers

of having a pond in the garden and also the fact,

as every parent knows, turn your back for two minutes

and no matter how small the child is, they can move like lightning.

Are you on a call at the moment?

No, that's fine.

Tell us about this call you got and how it developed.

It wasn't a call I took, it was a colleague,

but I was involved with it cos I was working with the force inspector,

who was overseeing the job.

Basically, an 18-month-old child managed to get into the garden,

fall into a pond, and was found by a family who called an ambulance.

He was very, very cold - it was in March when it was cold.

How serious was his condition and what was the response?

He was very, very cold and it wasn't looking very good.

Taken to hospital? Yeah, taken to hospital in the helicopter

and the parents were taken to hospital in the ambulance to

be there, and luckily, over time, over a couple of days,

they managed to stabilise him, start to warm him up.

The next thing we've heard, is that he's done extremely well and

they were quite surprised by it, but he was one of the lucky ones, really.

Two things about that -

first of all, the pond business - if you have small children...

The mother only had her back turned very briefly.

Yeah, I think they've got a door, or something

and he was with his brother watching the telly, and I think the door

made a squeak and normally they'd know if the child had gone out.

And children will move fast.

The other thing is, as an operator - and you have children -

do you get emotionally involved when you're taking a call like that?

You can't afford to, you've got to get on with the job in hand.

I suppose the adrenaline rush keeps you going, um, professionally.

Then afterwards, after the call's been taken and you've got time

to reflect, it might hit you then, cos we're all human.

Yeah. But, in the end,

you managed to get a response going that saved the child's life, so...

Along with ambulance, so... Yeah. Must have been a great feeling to have done that.

Be careful if you have a pond - make sure it's guarded

if you have toddlers. Thank you.

After weeks of dry conditions,

rain has made road surfaces suddenly very slippy.

Is it an accident?

Emergency care practitioner Mark Ainsworth-Smith is on duty

when an accident happens right in front of him.

Just going to go and see what's going on.

Mark needs to quickly assess the situation and call for back up.

Have you had an accident or are you broken down? Bit of an accident.

OK. You're all right? No injuries?

Absolutely fine. We're both medical students, so...

OK. I'll just have a quick chat.

Hello. I'm Mark, any injuries?

Is anyone injured?

All I can see...

Are you all right, sir? My name's Mark.

The silver car has had a substantial impact,

the driver will have to be treated.

But first, Mark has to discover

if there are any more critical injuries.

MARK: I'm just going to and see what's happening down there and I'll be with you in a moment.

Just so I can let control know what's happening.

Are you injured at all?

I feel OK at the moment. Who was in that car?

That guy there. Sir...

Mark radios through details of the incident.

I'm just getting an ambulance so we can get you checked out.

I'm in a car.

A three-vehicle RTC out in lane three.

At this stage I've got two people with minor injuries

and one complaining of chest pain.

Could you, please, request police or highways?

I'm going to need one ambulance here. Over.

This is a dangerous situation.

Until the police or Highways Agency can get there to

close off the road, everyone is at risk.

For everyone's safety, just stay this side of the road.

We've got the police coming

and we've got an ambulance coming to sort out this chap, as well.

I'm going to check him out now.

It doesn't seem that there's anyone else too seriously injured.

We'll just concentrate on him for the moment and then we can have a chat.

Mark starts to assess the driver.

Sir, I'd like you to keep your neck very still,

so just keep your head completely still for now.

We're going to give you a check over.

All these airbags have gone off. Have you got airbags to the side?

Keep your head still for me. OK. Fantastic.

What I'm going to do is your blood pressure first of all.

What do you remember happening?

I was just driving and saw them starting to brake

and I braked, my car just kept going.

You just slid. I slid about 20m.

It's quite a bit hit, actually, isn't it?

Can you tell me what day it is today?

Sunday.

And what month are we in right now?

September.

Keep your head really still for me.

I'm just going to feel your neck,

it might be sore where the seat belt was.

Any pain in there? No.

Big breath for me now.

And out. That's lovely, thank you.

The Highways Agency has arrived to manage the traffic.

He's complaining of some chest pains, otherwise,

these are the walking wounded.

We will just have a quick look at them, but they're OK,

and one of my other colleagues has just arrived.

Mark gets back to his patient's chest pain.

He can't assume it's been caused by impact with the airbag,

and wants to monitor his heart.

I'm just going to put some monitoring on your heart,

so we can keep an eye on your heart rate.

The police don't want to hold up the traffic any more than needed,

and get an update from Mark.

I've got an ambulance coming.

I'd rather get him in the back of the truck, but if you want to clear, I can move him.

We've got fire coming... I don't need fire. No?

His only injury is a central chest injury,

so I think it's airbag related, but I need to get an ECG in the ambulance.

The occupants of the car in front of David have escaped without injuries.

We tried to stop cos the van in front was slowing down quickly,

and we skidded a little bit, came to a stop without colliding,

and unfortunately we got rammed from behind by the elderly gentleman.

So, not great, but what can you do?

You all right, then? I'm absolutely fine.

Just a bit of a bump, to be honest.

Mark's back up has arrived.

This is David.

He's a 74-year-old male

and he's hit the back of traffic at about 60mph.

Quite significant intrusion in the front there.

He's complaining of pain in the centre of his chest,

he believes that's cos of where the airbag deployed.

OK, David. We're going to get you to spin yourself around and...

No new aches? Apart from the pain there, nothing new?

Good man.

Nice and steady.

Good man.

As David's taken to the ambulance for a more detailed

check of his heart, the carriageway is cleared

and traffic flow begins to get back to normal.

An alarming sight - a man is stuck 60 feet up a tree after

a parachute jump has gone dramatically wrong.

Local journalist Kevin Clark rushes to the scene

and starts recording the unfolding drama.

When we first got here, we pulled up outside the church

and it was obvious that we weren't going to get close enough to

shoot any kind of quality video.

So I came round the back of the building,

and that was as close as I was able to get.

The tree is just a short distance that way

and I was able to shoot quite a lot of coverage.

He seemed fairly calm.

He was obviously moving, obviously conscious.

It wasn't the case that he was just draped there.

But his movements were quite calm, quite placid,

so it didn't seem like there was any pain.

If he'd deliberate set out to land in the most inaccessible place

possible, given that he was in the middle of town,

he couldn't have done a better job, really.

Pracheen Gamawat was on his first parachute jump.

3,500 metres above, there's an aircraft filled with other

parachuters who are fearing the worst.

On the ground, all Pracheen's instructor can do is track him

through the binoculars.

It was probably within ten seconds of him leaving the aeroplane

when we realised he wasn't responding as we would have wanted.

Normally, someone would take control of the canopy pretty quickly,

certainly within the first ten seconds.

But there was none of that.

They last saw their man drifting two miles away from the landing site,

apparently unable to steer the canopy.

One of our worst nightmares is a parachutist out there landed

and we can't find them because they may be injured.

Again, that's why we keep the aircraft overhead.

Watched him go downwind off the field

and landing in the trees off in the distance.

Yeah, that's was actually quite a tense moment.

The emergency services are quickly despatched to Pracheen,

including fire chief Steve Cummings.

He's amazed to find Pracheen conscious,

talking and relatively unscathed.

A rescue such as this is casualty-driven,

so we look at the condition of the casualty.

Fortunately, on this occasion, he wasn't injured,

he was merely sitting on top of the tree.

Steve immediately calls in rope rescue specialist Tony Sugget

and his team.

But if Pracheen's landing was surprisingly comfortable,

Tony knows the rescue itself won't be easy.

I've never seen anything like it before

and perhaps won't see anything like it again.

It was completely out of the ordinary for us.

It wasn't just coming out of a building, it wasn't

just going below ground, we had to

improvise around our techniques that we would normally carry out.

It's an intricate job to remove Pracheen from the tree.

As the hours pass, the worry is his condition could get a lot worse.

He was actually assisting us,

putting harnesses on and clipping things onto him.

So, physical injuries, he seemed quite fine,

but the one concern that we had was to keep his blood moving round

his body - keep his body parts moving to prevent suspension trauma.

If Pracheen's blood flow is restricted too long,

there's a risk his body could be flooded with dangerous toxins

the moment he's released.

As the rescue operation stretches on,

Pracheen is beginning to complain of chronic leg pain -

a common symptom of suspension trauma.

Tony and the crew step up their efforts to release him.

The main area of concern for us was getting a rescuer to Pracheen

without dislodging any of the branches.

The second part of the rescue would then be securing him

to our own rescuer,

and the third part would be lowering Pracheen safely to the ground.

With Pracheen now safely attached to his rescuer, it's a

slow and cautious descent.

As we came down, any branch that snapped was similar to Kerplunk,

where any branch that went could have meant that Pracheen

fell to the ground.

So every branch that we traversed, every branch that we touched,

we had to be very careful it wasn't supporting his weight.

From Pracheen's point of view, this was probably quite

unnerving, cos he thought he was going to fall.

And at one point he was holding on to the rescuer's hands for dear life.

Every now and then, sounds of panic are heard coming from the tree.

MAN SHOUTS

Safely back on the ground, some five hours after jumping from

the plane, Pracheen is finally off to hospital.

Later, Pracheen recounts his side of the jump that went horribly wrong.

The driver involved in a motorway shunt in wet weather was taken to

hospital where his injuries were checked out.

David suffered severe bruising to his chest,

and was sent home with painkillers.

He's making a good recovery. Police brought no prosecutions.

The 12-year-old boy who came off his bike after colliding with

a car suffered a broken wrist.

Tyreese is in a plaster cast, but he's still riding his bike.

The brakes are now working.

I'm going to do some careful sips of water with you...

The stroke team at Bournemouth Hospital closely monitored

Alfio after he was given a clot-busting drug to lessen

the effects of a stroke.

How's this arm then?

Can you move it?

Try and stretch it out now. I've taken the weight.

Soon afterwards, things began to improve - and rapidly.

So quickly, that Alfio was home with his wife Eleanor the following day.

They asked me, "Can you move your arm, your left arm?"

Initially, I couldn't, but some time later they asked me again,

"Can you move your left arm?"

I said, "Oh, right. Great."

I remember all the way to the ward...

..kind of, keeping my arm up in case it stopped!

I never, ever, ever want anything better than this.

The happiness of having my husband with me,

nothing will make it happier than this.

Alfio has made an astonishing recovery.

It's just a few weeks since paramedics Simon

and Wendy arrived at his house - he could barely speak

and he'd lost the use of his left arm.

Can you squeeze my hands for me?

Squeeze this one.

You're not able to, are you?

Don't worry.

Elena travelled with Alfio to hospital.

She had to run to a neighbour for help after finding her

husband collapsed on the kitchen floor.

I was almost asleep and I hear...

SHE YELLS IN PAIN

Of course I couldn't really...

Then he said, "Elena!"

Not clear, but I heard his voice, and I thought, "Oh, my God."

I assumed that he is gone for good.

I could hardly speak, I was all shaking and everything.

Even though he knows how close a call he's had,

Alfio never doubted he'd go home.

The thought of saying, "Will I make it or...?"

No.

It never occurred to me.

That positive attitude has helped Alfio get back to

caring for Elena once again.

57 years together and feeling for each other the same as we did many,

many years ago, when we first met.

That cant be bad.

I just want to have you and to be with me.

That's it.

She's after my money, really!

THEY LAUGH

The parachutist who landed in the top of a 60ft tree was checked

over at hospital and escaped without injury.

Looking back, Pracheen can't quite believe what happened.

I still remember, one of the guys came up and he was like, "Are you OK?

"Are you hurt?"

And I'm like, "No, man, don't worry about me, I'm perfectly fine."

And he's like, "You're not fine. You're stuck in a tree."

And I'm like, "Yeah. Please, call someone."

It did get really painful and my legs were really numb at the end.

I couldn't move my legs for a while.

But then, everything was my fault, so in a way I did deserve that pain.

It's not unheard of for parachutists to freeze as they descend.

It seems Pracheen was suffering from a known syndrome.

So what exactly did happen to Pracheen after jumping

from the plane?

It's not unheard of for someone to be so overwhelmed by the experience

of jumping out of an aeroplane that the mind just does a complete blank.

It's sometimes referred to as a sensory overload.

I was 60ft above the ground.

Still just cuts and bruises - nothing happened.

Just...I'm blessed.

There's just one word which comes to the minds of everyone involved

that day, after his unscheduled landing.

Lucky.

If it's possible to be lucky landing 60ft up a tree, yes,

he was quite lucky.

Pracheen was a really, really lucky young man.

Of all of the places he could have landed,

of all of the possible scenarios, he landed in a comfortable

position in the tree, in the middle of the town centre.

I don't think he'll ever really be as lucky again.

I still seems like a dream to be honest.

It doesn't seem like it actually happened, but then...

the canopy tells a story.

Well, I've confirmed one thing for myself - I've never wanted to

do a parachute jump and I never WILL do a parachute jump.

I've never seen the point in jumping out of a perfectly

serviceable plane.

That's it for today's Real Rescues. See you next time.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

This is Malcolm. He owns Iceland.

He's the one that's going to present us with the ten grand WHEN we win it.