At 5:30 pm on Monday, Portland Firefighters from Station 29 were dispatched to the report of a person injured on the South side of Powell Butte. The patient was horseback riding with 3 other riders when he fell off his horse.
Firefighters initially had difficulty determining the location of the patient. Thru cell phones and dispatch, one of the other three riders was directed meet them at the trailhead. After hiking about a mile up the trail with their medical equipment firefighters located the patient and began treating him.
As firefighters were making their way to the patient they realized getting him down the trail would be very difficult, especially if they had to carry the patient. They asked that Utility 22 (stationed at the St. Johns Fire Station) be dispatched to assist with transporting the patient down the trail.
Utility 22 carries 2 four-wheelers that are adapted for many uses, including patient transport. Once the 4-wheelers reached the patient he was loaded and transported down the trail to the waiting ambulance, then taken to Sunnyside Kaiser Hospital.
Rescues in the many wild spaces, inside the city limits, often seem to take a long time. One of the biggest challenges for firefighters is finding the exact location of the patient. Although firefighters have maps of all of the trails in every park many times the signs marking the trail are vandalized, or people are unsure of their location. The best way for the public to help the rescuers is to send someone out to a main trail to guide firefighters to the patient. A cell phone is an indispensable tool, since most of the wild areas in the City of Portland have cell phone coverage.