Multi-agency rescue after hiker fractures leg at Lalaja waterfalls

An ex­ten­sive mul­ti-agency res­cue op­er­a­tion was un­der­way in the Lala­ja South Road area, off the Ari­ma–Blan­chisseuse Road last evening, af­ter 40-year-old Faiyyad Ho­sein, of Tabaquite Road, Rio Claro, suf­fered a frac­tured right fe­mur while rap­pelling down a se­ries of wa­ter­falls ear­li­er yes­ter­day.

Po­lice and fire of­fi­cials said Ho­sein was ac­com­pa­nied by 35-year-old Visham Ramd­hanie of Cou­va when the in­ci­dent oc­curred.

Hik­er Tian Wat­son, who was part of Ho­sein’s group, man­aged to make his way out of the for­est to make the ini­tial re­port.

Ac­cord­ing to Fire Ser­vice of­fi­cials, spe­cial­ized LSAR (Land Search and Res­cue) teams were ac­ti­vat­ed.

A to­tal of 14 Fire Ser­vice per­son­nel were de­ployed, in­clud­ing se­nior of­fi­cer F/Sub/O Rav­el­lo and med­ical re­spon­der FF Cox.

The res­cue com­mand is be­ing led by FF 2983 Reid.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force al­so de­ployed two to three sol­diers, led by Cpl. Dot­tin, in­clud­ing mil­i­tary med­ical per­son­nel who joined the res­cue team.

A se­nior fire of­fi­cers said re­spon­ders were mo­bilised at the Ari­ma Fire Sta­tion at 1 pm and de­part­ed at 1.12 pm fol­low­ing a brief­ing. The res­cue of­fi­cial­ly be­gan along Lala­ja South Road at 1.50 pm, with ve­hi­cles pro­ceed­ing to the fur­thest ac­ces­si­ble point be­fore teams be­gan a steep hike to the re­mote lo­ca­tion just af­ter 2 pm.

Of­fi­cials said it may take sev­en hours for crews to reach the in­jured man and nine hours to ex­tract him from the forest­ed ter­rain. Fire of­fi­cials es­ti­mate the teams may re­turn to Lala­ja South Road around 7 this morn­ing. —Ot­to Car­ring­ton