Toddler Miraculously Survives Over 30-Foot Plunge Down Embankment in Runaway Stroller
It’s a mom’s worst nightmare: the stroller — with baby inside — hurtling down a steep incline, headed toward rocks or a street or a body of water
One mother from Rogers, Arkansas, had quite the scare on July 31 when she went for what should have been a lovely after-dinner stroll.
She and a friend were walking around Lake Atlanta with her 22-month-old baby around 8 p.m. At some point during their walk, the stroller began rolling down a steep embankment, crashing toward the lake more than 30 feet below.
“We know the terrain and topography associated with lake Atalanta, what makes it beautiful is what makes it dangerous and so it’s important that people pay attention to that sort of thing,” Rogers Fire Chief Tom Jenkins told KFSM-TV.
According to NBC News, the panicked mother’s call to 911 made the underlying circumstances clear.
“My baby, I thought I had the brakes on on her stroller and it went down the hill and I followed her,” she said to the dispatcher.
Of course, as soon as she realized what was happening, the mother had taken off after the baby and her friend followed suit. Thankfully, the stroller was stopped by a tree before it could plunge into the lake.
The mother ended up breaking her ankle in the process, and the baby got a bloody nose, but it could have been much worse.
“RFD responded to a technical rescue this evening at Lake Atalanta involving a stroller with a child that went off the side of a cliff near the lake,” The Rogers Fire Department posted on their Facebook page.
“Luckily the baby is fine and mother suffered only minor injuries. Firefighters were able to conduct the rescue using specialized equipment.”
The rescue was easier said than done, though, as it proved difficult to reach the two women and baby.
“Packaged her into a basket and ended up using the ropes and a mechanical advantage to go ahead and retrieve the patient and bring her and the child and the other bystander back up over the embankment,” Technical Rescue Team Captain Josh Chapman said, according to KFSM-TV.
The baby posed a particularly tricky case.
“They don’t make harnesses for small children, they are not supposed to go rock climbing, so what we ended up doing is taking and securing her pretty well to one of our rescuers,” Chapman continued.
“You’ll notice it’s a backpack, so we can put it on and hike in with it because just like yesterday a lot of these people are on trails so we have to take the equipment that we may or may not need and hike it all in with us.”
“Not to overplay anything, it’s a bit of a miracle that the tree caught her just right and kept her from going into the water,” Chapman said, according to NBC. “You can call it luck, divine intervention, a miracle, whatever you like.”
“All in all it was a win because nobody had any permanent injuries you know everyone is going to walk away from it in the end and be okay.”
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