The rescue of a Rockridge Secondary student who fell down a cliff on a class outing near Cypress Falls recently had a local component, and an important one. Islander Birch Nesbitt-Jerman was the first, and for a long while the only one, on the scene to help his stricken schoolmate get through the ordeal.
Sixteen-year-old Nesbitt-Jerman was on an outing with his Grade 10 P.E. class and a Grade 8 class at Cypress Falls on Thursday, May 2. He was walking along a path when a Grade 8 student ran up to him "screaming and yelling" that a classmate had fallen down a cliff.
Without hesitation, Nesbitt-Jerman backtracked, saw where the fallen youth was and quickly made his way down the cliff-side. He said he took a safer direction than the one where his schoolmate had fallen.
Later, a teacher told him that if any teachers had been there, they would not have allowed him to scale down such a dangerous cliff.
But they weren't on the scene yet and down he went.
It was more than a 14 metre-drop and his years on Bowen helped him, he said, as he's done a lot of climbing on the island. "I like climbing and so I was not worried about my own safety," Birch told the Undercurrent.
"My parents call me part monkey. Also, I was really concerned for this kid and I wanted to get to him fast," Birch said. "He wasn't really moving when I got to him but I think he was conscious. I'm not really sure. Anyway, he did wake up pretty quickly. He was lying in a puddle of his own blood from his head mixed with water from the river. His femur was clearly broken. I could see right away that his leg was broken. It was really fat and curved."
Besides the broken leg, the boy was bleeding from a gash on his head, had a neck injury and was concussed. It took a while for the paramedics to get there. Birch said, "it felt like a really long time." Above him, he said the teachers did a great job keeping the students calm and safe, and students helped by passing down coats and other items to keep the injured boy warm and stem the blood flow.
"He was really tough, really tough," Birch said of the injured 13-year-old. "I don't know how he didn't cry or anything. Basically, I just took my shirt off and wiped most of the blood off and put pressure on the gash and made sure no more [blood] came out."
The two talked and Birch learned the boy had only recently started at Rockridge. "I asked about his parents and stuff," Birch said. "Kept him talking. He was like 'I can't believe this happened. It doesn't feel real.'"
When the paramedics arrived, one made her way down to the ledge. The paramedic got Birch to help as she applied a brace to the boy's neck; she told Birch that he'd done all the right things.
A while later, four or five firemen came rappelling down the cliff-side to join Birch, the paramedic and the boy. They took over and Birch had to wait to get back up the cliff as they would not allow him to go the way he had come down.
The injured boy was slowly rappelled up the cliff.
Birch's parents, Carolyn and John, and sister Allegra, are understandably proud, and Carolyn got a phone call from the Rockridge principal, Jeannette Laursoo, telling her how wonderfully her son had performed.
Had he not gone down so quickly, things could have been far worse for the young student.
Birch said the best thing to come out of it all is that his schoolmate is expected to make a full recovery.
