Voice 9, International Desk: A 13-year-old North Dakota kid has been rescued after falling almost 100 feet from the Grand Canyon's north rim during a family excursion.
The BBC claimed that it took two hours for rescue workers to bring Wyatt Kauffman to safety after he fell down a ledge at the famed tourist site's North Rim on Tuesday.
The boy had nine shattered bones, vertebrae, a ruptured spleen, a punctured lung, a concussion, a broken hand, and a dislocated finger when he was taken to the hospital.
"I was up on the ledge, moving out of the way so other people could take pictures," Wyatt told KPNX in Phoenix. "I squatted down and grasped a rock. I only had one hand on it."
"It wasn't that good of a grip," he continued. It was almost pushing me back. "I lost my grip and began to slip."
He informed a local news station that he was sitting and hanging onto a boulder with one hand when he lost his grasp and began to tumble back.
"After the fall, I don't remember anything after that," he stated.
"I just remember waking up in the back of an ambulance and a helicopter, then getting on a plane and flying here."
A crew from Grand Canyon National Park dragged the little boy to safety.
Given what his son had been through, Brian Kaufman felt his son's survival was nothing short of a miracle. Wyatt, he said, was not a candidate for helicopter recovery, so rescuers rappelled down the canyon face to reach him and then used a basket to bring him back to the canyon rim.
Brian Kaufman stated that his kid was then transferred to a helicopter, which transported him to an airplane, which then flew him to Las Vegas.
Another photocContributed (Brian Kaufman)
