When the main character of the film falls into the abyss, we know that there will be a twig on the slope, which he will have time to grab onto at the last moment. It turns out that this happens not only in the movies.
Three residents of the Sharo-Argun village of the Shatoi region of Chechnya were gathering hazelnuts in the highlands. One of them, a 20-year-old young man, came too close to the cliff, slipped and fell into an abyss about 300 meters deep, according to the local emergency department.
Luck was on his side: the man rolled along the slope for about 150 m and managed to catch hold of a tree. If not for this, another 150 m of a steep slope was waiting for him below, giving way to cliffs and a gravel road.
“If he had not caught a tree, the tragedy would have been inevitable,” says Khalid Akhmadov, head of the fire department No. 19 for the protection of the Shatoy region.
Rescuers and firefighters went down the slope to the victim with the help of climbing equipment. They assessed the man's transportability and gave him first aid. It was decided to lower the victim on a special stretcher down the slope to the road.
The victim was taken to hospital. More than 30 employees of the emergency department and volunteers were involved in the work.