In a strange operation, mountain rescuers in Sölden, Tyrol, pulled a drunken holidaymaker (40) out of the Ötztaler Ache on Wednesday night. The drunken man had mixed up the direction after visiting a pub and fell into the river.
So far, the Sölden mountain rescue service cannot complain about a lack of work in 2024. Of course, the team around local branch manager Franz Josef Fiegl will not soon forget mission number 29 – not because of any particular challenge, but because of the circumstances. Alarm shortly before midnight Exactly at 11:57 p.m. on Tuesday, the Sölder mountain rescuers received the alarm via the Tyrol control center. “One person was in the stream bed of the Ötztaler Ache and couldn’t get out,” says operations manager Maximilian Riml. Of course, the victim was not somewhere in a remote area, but near the village center in the Ache. “The man had raised the alarm himself. When we arrived on site, a police patrol was already there,” says Riml. “The victim was crouching on a stone on the stream bed below the road.” The 40-year-old German holidaymaker was waiting there to be rescued. He only suffered abrasions. The emergency services then pulled the man on a rope around ten meters up the main road. Luckily he only suffered abrasions. “Suddenly the sidewalk was over,” the visibly drunk holidaymaker looked for a double explanation for his fall. “The man was on the way home from a bar in the town center to his accommodation, but went in the wrong direction on the village road,” says mountain rescuer Riml. Then he crossed the street and ended up in the stream – because the sidewalk had just ended. “He wasn’t able to get back up the rocky embankment on his own.” “Service” Transport home The 40-year-old didn’t even have to see a doctor. So the Sölder mountain rescuers brought him back to his accommodation – as a kind of “service” – so to speak.
source site-12