Helicopter winched an injured woman up from a mine shaft

An injured woman was rescued from a mining hole outside Norberg in Sweden on Friday. The local fire service rescue team had failed to get the woman out from the mine safely and time was running out.  

During Friday afternoon local time a person heard cries for help at  the mine Långgruvan in the forest north of Norberg. It turned out that a woman had fallen into a mining hole. According to the Swedish Maritime Administration,  the shaft is 5-10 meters in diameter and 25 meters deep.

"It is very unusual that we make rescue operations in mines", said sea rescue officer Maria Boman at the Swedish Coast Guard to Swedish Television, SVT.

The rescue service had assessed that they could not get the woman out of the hole in a safe way and decided to ask for a helicopter from the Maritime Sea and Air Rescue.

Fire & Rescue staff had been able to get to the floor of the mine and tend to the woman´s injuries.  However the assessment was that manual winching up the rock face would be too risky and could worsen the injuries. 

"The helicopter were already in the air in the Stockholm  area so they could fly there quite quickly. It was lucky that the hole was so straight otherwise it would not have been possible to winch the injured woman up from the hole", according to Maria Boman.

This is possibly the first time this type of rescue operation has been done in Sweden.  

"I think so. I have worked here for a long time and have not experienced anything like this before", said Maria Broman to SVT.se

The facts on this case are still unclear, and there is a criminal investigation underway to determine how the woman ended up in the mine.

Photo Credit: Photo taken from a rescue exercise with the Swedish Maritime Authority in 2015. Wikipedia Commons License.