Rescuing an injured mountain biker who was stuck after falling 50 feet, and a woman stuck on the Rimrocks near the airport, kept rescue crews busy on Sunday afternoon as a simultaneous rescue effort for the two women was underway.
The first rescue began just after 12:30 p.m. and crews were busy until 4 p.m., while another rescue that began at 2 p.m. lasted until 5 p.m. on Sunday. One woman suffered a broken leg, but no life-threatening injuries were reported from either rescue.
The first rescue started after a woman mountain biking on State Trust Lands near the Indian Cliffs Trail fell off a 50-foot cliff close to the Ironwood subdivision.
The woman, in her early 50s, was biking with a group of friends when she fell. It’s unclear how she fell. She called 911 herself and helped first responders find her, but she was unable to move due to her injuries.
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She was about a mile from the nearest access road and had broken her leg from the fall, Billings Fire Department Battalion Chief Jason Lyon said.
Finding and helping the woman proved difficult for authorities. First responders had to hike up to tend to her while they figured out how to get her out of the rough terrain.
The firefighters accessed the area from the backyard of a mansion at the end of Canyon Woods Drive near the Ironwood subdivision. Emergency response vehicles and an ambulance waited in the driveway of the Billings ‘castle’ to take her to a hospital.
Just before 4 p.m. she was airlifted in stable condition to a hospital, Billings Fire Chief Bill Rash said. American Medical Response and the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Department responded to the incident.
Lyon and a rescue truck bounded from the far West End to East Airport Drive to assist in the second rescue, which started two hours before they delivered the bicyclist to the hospital.
Just after 2 p.m. a woman found herself stuck on the Rims above Cactus Drive after attempting to climb down from an access point off of East Airport Road, Rash said.
After apparently suffering a mental health crisis, the woman climbed down the Rims, even after a male tried to stop her. Rash did not know his relation to her, but that man later called 911 when she was stuck.
Billings police officers approached her from below the Rims but weren't able to coax her down. She was highly combative, prompting a rescue using the last of the fire station staff. Rash wasn't sure of her age or her residence. Aside from being mentally distressed, she did not appear to be physically injured.
From atop the Rims, rescue technicians with the Billings Fire Department belayed down to her. She continued to be highly combative and distressed, so rescuers decided it was unsafe to approach her and bring her up in a harness, Rash said.
"She was very combative, they couldn’t do much with her to bring her down. So what they’re doing now is they’re working to administer advanced life support medication to her," he said during the rescue. "We’re going to calm her down and bring her up safely."
A paramedic tried to calm her down from the base of the Rims, while crews worked to bring a basket stretcher down to restrain her and bring her back up to the top where an ambulance waited.
She was hauled up in the basket stretcher just after 5 p.m., three hours after her ordeal began. She was taken to a hospital to be examined. Rash said.
Her combative behavior did complicate the rescue, but responders were working as fast as possible to get to her.
"So with any kind of problem you can just see how long it takes for us to safely, for our safety and theirs, to get them to medical treatment," Lyon said.
Despite involving highly trained personnel, the simultaneous rescues stretched the fire department thin, rendering crews unable to respond to other calls around town.
Soon, reinforcements were called in to help.
“(There are) two standby crews that are currently working that were called in to help cover calls,” Rash said.
Calling in a standby crew happens once or twice a month, he said.
While the department doesn’t charge for rescues, Rash estimated an extensive and technical rescue like the two today would cost about $8,000 to $10,000 apiece.
Rescuing two in the same day is unusual but shows an increasing trend that he has observed, Rash said.
“These rescues are becoming a lot more frequent, and the severity is really changing,” Rash said. “It ebbs and flows but I’ve seen a constant trend of the frequency of the Rims rescues like this, and even the severity has increased, too, in the last five years I’ve noticed.”