By Buddy Gough
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)
Copyright 2006 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.
A hiker’s recent and near-fatal encounter with ground-nesting yellow jackets bears out the difficulty of emergency rescues in remote areas of the Ozarks.
Members of the Highlands Chapter of the Ozark Society made a bushwhack Oct. 7 into Dismal Hollow near the Nail community in Newton County. Despite its ominous-sounding name, the hollow is noted for spectacular scenery with high bluffs, rock shelters, waterfalls and interesting rock formations.
The 20 hikers, including veteran hike leaders Bob Cross and Terry Fredrick of Fayetteville, had set out for the hollow from an Ozark National Forest road at 10 a.m. and by 11:45 a.m. had bushwhacked nearly two miles to reach the bottom of a bluff at the most distant point of the hike.
The group was bunched up in a narrow passage beneath the bluff, where their attention was focused on the interesting rock formations overhead. As a result, they failed to notice a hive of ground-nesting yellow jackets in their path, according to Cross, who related the happenings Friday.
The hive had recently been dug up by a bear, which undoubtedly had the yellow jackets riled up. When someone stepped over the hive, the yellow jackets swarmed up and began stinging hikers. Alice Andrews of Boxley was stung several times around the waist and almost immediately began to suffer a severe reaction leading to full anaphylactic shock. Within minutes, Andrews lost consciousness, stopped breathing and had no detectable pulse.
The group would later learn that such cases in the distant outdoors are almost always fatal, but Andrews was extraordinarily fortunate. One of Andrews’ fellow hikers was a doctor and another was recently certified in CPR.
Working as a team, the two began performing CPR on Andrews. They restored her breathing, then lost her, got her back again and lost her again. It took nearly an hour to finally get Andrews breathing on her own.
Some hikers had cell phones, but the devices didn’t work in the remote location, as is often the case in the Ozarks.
Unable to make an emergency call on the spot, a group member who was a young and fit ex-Army Ranger headed back to the trail head lickety-split, jumped into his vehicle and drove to a convenience store in Nail where he was able to call the Newton County sheriff’s office in Jasper.
At 12:45 p.m., about an hour after Andrews was stung, the dispatcher at the sheriff’s office received the emergency call and immediately contacted a paramedic and ambulance driver on duty in Jasper for the North Arkansas Regional Medical Center in Harrison.
The dispatcher next called the Deer-Nail Volunteer Fire Department. They in turn called additional emergency personnel in Jasper and Pelsor and others with the National Forest Service.
As Jasper-based ambulance driver Danny Smith drove to the trail head, he also placed a call to an air-evac crew in Harrison.
In the meantime, Cross had hiked out to the trail head so he could use his Global Positioning System unit to lead rescuers to Andrews by the most direct route.
By 1:30 p.m., Smith in his ambulance and first responders with pickups and all-terrain vehicles had converged on the forest road for the rescue.
“I was amazed they all got there so quickly and that so many of them showed up,” Cross said.
With Cross leading the way, the rescuers reached Andrews at 2:30 p.m., at which time Smith began giving her oxygen, an IV drip and other medications.
The helicopter also showed up, but was unable to land in the heavily forested terrain above or below the bluff or anywhere nearby. It was not equipped with vertical-lift gear to conduct an aerial rescue.
After Andrews’ condition was determined to be as stable as possible, it was decided that she would have to be carried out on a litter board. At that point, the more than two dozen rescuers on the scene became lifesavers because it took several teams of six-person litter-bearers taking turns to get Andrews out of the hollow and up steep terrain to the ambulance.
The teams left the accident site at 3:30 p.m. and required 1 1/2 hours of arduous carrying to reach the ambulance at 5 p.m. An ATV was able to be used toward the end.
Nearly an hour later and about six hours after she was stung, Andrews was delivered to the hospital in Harrison, where she would spend the next two days in the intensive-care unit.
Although the 60-year-old hiker had no memory of what happened after she was stung, she responded quickly to medical treatment. In fact, she felt well enough to join a hike the next Saturday.
In describing the incident in the Highlands Chapter newsletter, Cross had high praise for all involved in saving Andrews’ life. The immediate CPR was critical, but the whole-hearted response of paramedics and emergency volunteers in reaching a remote and difficult site also was crucial. For the hikers, the ordeal was a learning experience on how rescues are handled in the backcountry of the Ozarks, and the main lesson learned is that rescues in life-threatening situations are likely to be lengthy affairs.
As a show of appreciation, the Highlands Chapter has voted to donate $500 to the Deer-Nail Volunteer Fire Department.