Beacon Fire chief calls for more rescue equipment

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Fire chief calls for more rescue equipment

Beacon – The rescue of a man who fell down an embankment in deep woods in Beacon on Saturday has promoted Fire Chief Timothy Joseph to call on the city council to provide the department with the tools for those types of rescues.

The Hopewell Junction man in his 40s, was located about one mile into the woods near the Fishkill Creek and railroad tracks. He had fallen down a 25 to 30 foot embankment while hiking and broke his ankle.

The chief Sunday said as the city acquires more forest and parkland and they are open for public recreation, it must provide equipment for rescues such as the most recent one. “If the city lacks the proper equipment to respond to these off-the-beaten-path areas, like all-terrain vehicles outfitted for patient transport, we will see response times to these incidents continue to rise,” he said. In this incident, firefighters “did an amazing job carrying very heavy rescue and medical equipment to an isolated area, treating and packaging the patient, then carrying him back, for a roundtrip of about two miles.”

But, the chief warned that had this incident been a cardiac problem, not a broken ankle, “I don’t know that we would have reached him in time.”

To bad the call wasn't in their district