By JESSE GRAHAM
A MELBOURNE Water employee is nursing a twisted ankle, after an incident early Monday that saw four emergency services crews rescue him from the bush.
SES and CFA crews were called out an area in Fernshaw, near the Black Spur, at 10.32am on Monday 1 February, after it was reported that a Melbourne Water employee slipped and twisted an ankle in dense bushland.
Healesville and Upper Yarra SES and Healesville and Badger Creek CFA crews came out to the area, and worked with the man’s co-workers to find and recover him from down in the bush.
Healesville SES Controller Geoff Stott said the man was part of a group searching for noxious weeds in the forest, and that the dirt had been loose and uneven following the storms and rain that hit the area in previous days.
“It was very steep – there was no pathway,” he said.
“It would have been easy to put your foot down an animal hole.
“We had to basically make our own pathway through the jungle.”
Once they’d strapped the man into a rescue basket, the workers took turns in carrying him through the bush and out to a waiting ambulance, which took him to Maroondah Hospital.
Mr Stott, who stopped by the Mail office with SES members Maria Lastra and Andrew Worley after the incident, said the man was in “high spirits” through the rescue.
A Melbourne Water spokesperson confirmed that the man was nursing a twisted ankle – not a broken bone – and that he was taken to hospital as a precaution.
