Survivors of the avalanche at Everest base camp have been describing how a British doctor who was caught up in it helped save the lives of 23 critically injured people, despite being wounded herself. She later stitched up her own leg without anaesthetic.
When the avalanche triggered by the 7.9-magnitude Nepalese earthquake struck, Dr Rachel Tullet, 34, from Cranbrook in Kent, was swept on to a rock and buried under a layer of ice crystals for several minutes. She said: “I realised I’d injured my leg, but I was just amazed that I’d survived it. And in the scale of what happened to other people, it just didn’t even register.”
She immediately sprang into action and led an operation that helped keep 25 seriously injured people – 19 Nepalese and six foreign climbers – alive until they were evacuated by helicopter nearly 24 hours later. Two later died of their injuries in Kathmandu.
David Hamilton, expedition leader of the Jagged Globe team, whose camp was in the middle of the avalanche’s path, said: “What she didn’t tell anyone is that she had actually injured her leg quite badly. She’d torn her ligaments, cracked her patella, and had a gaping wound in the middle of her leg, which she went on to stitch up herself the next day without anaesthetic.”
Details of the role she played emerged as the Foreign Office confirmed the death of backpacker Matthew Carapiet, 23, an architecture student from Bearsted, Kent, who was trekking in Langtang Valley when the earthquake struck. His family said “he made a huge impression on the lives of everyone he met”.
Tullet, who now lives in New Zealand, is a specialist in emergency and wilderness medicine and had come as a volunteer to work in Everest ER, the medical tent at the mountain’s base camp run by the Himalayan Rescue Association. Its mission is to provide paid-for care for the expeditions, with the proceeds being used to provide free medical care for Sherpas. While there has been criticism that the climbers on Everest received priority treatment and access to helicopter evacuation, given the scale of the catastrophe elsewhere, the vast majority of those whose lives were saved were Nepalese Sherpas and support staff.
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