Copyright 2005 Bangor Daily News
Lincoln, Maine, manager says department has corrected procedures
By NICK SAMBIDES JR.
Bangor Daily News (Maine)
LINCOLN, Maine — Flaws in search procedures might have left a troubled young man to die on a radio tower atop Fish Hill last week but for a Mountainview Drive resident who helped him get to Penobscot Valley Hospital, town officials said Wednesday.
Town firefighters, police and state game wardens ended the search for the man too early and suffered communications lapses and jurisdictional questions that left Robert Rhodes alone with the troubled young man on the tower, Town Manager Glenn Aho conceded Wednesday.
Fire Chief Joshua L. Williams since has rewritten Fire Department procedures to fix the problems, Aho said.
“We obviously let some people down with our service,” Aho said Wednesday. “I am not pleased with our response [during the rescue], but I am pleased with what has come of it.
“Chief Williams has taken responsibility and taken measures to ensure that the situation will not happen again.”
Rhodes and his wife, Melanie, heard the young man many times at their house at 6 Mountainview Drive shortly after 1 p.m. Nov. 22, but the sound was indistinct and intermittent, probably because of the heavy winds, rain and the way sound travels through the thick woods atop Fish Hill, Melanie Rhodes said.
“We heard, ‘Help me! Help me!’ At first it just sounded like somebody making noise. It really didn’t sound like words,” Melanie Rhodes said. “We hear things all the time from the other side of Fish Hill and Transalpine [Road] because of the way the sound carries down the hill.”
While his wife called the Fire Department and the search began, Robert Rhodes followed the sound through the woods to the tower on Fish Hill near Lion Hill Road. During that time, firefighters and police told Melanie Rhodes that they believed the lost man’s cries for help were just someone playing a prank, she said.
“Rob saw them [firefighters and police] from the hill and screamed and hollered, but they never came,” Melanie Rhodes said. “He got so angry he started swearing at them.”
Rhodes stopped yelling because it was upsetting the young man, she said. The young man’s hypothermia was evident in his bleached white fingers and chilled appearance. He was not wearing warm winter clothing.
Despite his lacking any formal crisis intervention training, Rhodes managed to talk the young man down from his 45-foot perch, helped him get under the barbed-wire fence surrounding the tower and helped him almost to the hospital before firefighters or police even noticed, Melanie Rhodes said.
“I think it [the search] could have been a little more thorough, to be diplomatic about it,” she said. “I could have been more informed. I had to go to them, and I really didn’t know what was going on, and then three people came to the door and told me that they were calling off the search. They were very pleasant about it, but they thought it was a prank.”
The search lasted about 2.5 hours. About 15 firefighters, police and a game warden, Sgt. Ron Dunham of the Maine Warden Service, participated. The searchers covered JR and Evergreen drives and Hale and Pinkham streets and surrounding woods as they struggled to determine where the voice was coming from.
Williams did not immediately return telephone messages seeking comment Wednesday.
After his wife picked him up at the hospital, Rhodes met with Aho at the town office to express his displeasure.
Aho said the search was the first he has seen in town since becoming town manager 10 years ago. He expressed gratitude at Rhodes’ actions, calling him an outstanding citizen.
“Not only did he find a young person who was in desperate need of assistance, but he came to me to share his concerns with our operation, which were all justified,” Aho said. “I am very thankful that Bob brought the concerns to my attention.
“Without feedback like Bob’s, we can’t provide better services. I encourage that of all our residents. We can’t continually improve our services without people like Bob to let us know how we’re doing,” he added. “I hope that the larger lesson here is that we are not perfect, but we strive for continued improvement.”
Melanie Rhodes said she was proud of her husband, a millworker at Lincoln Paper & Tissue Co., but not surprised. She recalled how when they went out to celebrate her pregnancy with their daughter, Autumn, 6, he gave the Heimlich maneuver to a man who was choking on his food.
“Everybody else was sitting there staring at this guy, and Rob just stood up and did it. That’s just how he is,” Melanie Rhodes said.