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Mountain rescuer who fell 500ft saving campers flouting lockdown rules will be in wheelchair for rest of his life
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The mountain rescue volunteer who plunged 500ft trying to save two campers flouting lockdown rules will now have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
60-year-old Chris Lewis was one of the members called out on February 6th to Red Screes in the Lake District after two men, who had travelled from Liverpool and Leicester, required help.
One of the men, a 47-year-old from Leicester, suffered chest pains during the night which meant the pair needed to call for help.
The campers were each fined £200 for breaching the lockdown rules.
However, Mr Lewis fell on the rescue mission and it has now been confirmed he will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
Patterdale Mountain Rescue team leader Mike Rippon said: “He’s got quite a lot of damage to his back in the area of his neck which has pretty serious and critical conditions for the future.
“We expect him to be at the best case wheelchair-bound but that would be a pretty good outcome.”
Speaking on how the catastrophic injuries suffered by Chris Lewis had hit the entire team, Rippon said: “It has been significant. In the last seven days or so we have tried to assess the team’s morale, mental wellbeing and how it has affected everybody.
“We’ve put things in place to allow people to reach out about what they’re feeling as a result of the incident. These things don’t come out in people overnight so we’ll have to monitor things for the foreseeable future.
“We are a team of dedicated volunteers and like everyone in mountain rescue we give our time freely, we go out and rescue people at the drop of a hat. It is unfortunate that in this case these people were breaking lockdown rules.
“The outpouring of sympathy has been humbling and the funds raised will go to Chris for the long term, they will be for his future.”
His colleague Mike Blakey said: “I’ve done this for 25 years, I can honestly say this was the worst rescue.
“I’ve seen some things in my time but you never expect to have to rescue one of your own. He’s having conversations with me already about where we are going to go in the wheelchair.”
Despite the anger felt towards the two campers online for flouting the lockdown rules, Martin Cotterell from the team of volunteers said they are ‘not there to judge’.
He said: “We are there to help. We all love the fells, we are all mountaineers, we go out there because we think we can help people in difficulty. Trying to judge is wrong.”
An online fundraiser has now been set up, with more than £450,000 already raised to provide Chris with the support he’ll need for the rest of his life.
Local resident Kate Whittenbury, who started one of the funds for Mr Lewis, said: “Local people are quite angry about it to be honest. It didn’t really have to happen, they shouldn’t have been here in the first place.
“I just thought something positive needed to be done to offset the negativity.”