Remarkable Rescue Leads to Training Video

HANNIBAL, MISSOURI, HOMETOWN TO MARK TWAIN and his adopted children Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, has a lot of tourist attractions that bring thousands of visitors annually.  One of these is a natural feature known as “Lovers’ Leap,” a river bluff promontory that rises 240 ft. above the town below.

The bluff is owned by Hannibal Parks & Recreation dept. and has a parking lot provided for visitors who wish to walk over and view the sight.  Last month on August 12, two elderly women from Illinois stopped by for a visit, but when the driver pulled into a parking space she pressed on the accelerator instead of the brake pedal and the car lunged across the barrier, through two fences and over the edge of the precipice.  Miraculously, the car was stopped about 30 ft. down the face of the cliff by a tree whose branches are only about 4 inches in diameter.  If not for that small but strong tree, the car would have continued the plunge all the way down.

Courier-Post / Engel

The Hannibal Fire Department responded on the rescue call and, utilizing their aerial ladder, rappelled down to the car and retrieved the shaken but uninjured ladies and brought them up.  The Hannibal Courier-Post documented the rescue and assembled this video report:

A few days later, a Hannibal resident sent the newspaper clipping of the rescue to a relative who works for Working Fire Training Systems, a video training production company that provides training videos for thousands of fire departments throughout North America.  They called the HFD and determined that the rescue effort had all the ingredients to make a good video.  So last week they brought a production crew up from their St. Louis headquarters and began filming interviews for the story.  This video, also produced by the Courier-Post, tells us about this new venture (and has some additional views of the rescue operation):

Read the first news report and witness statements from the Courier-Post HERE.
The follow-up story about the training video is HERE.

KHQA-TV

Courier-Post / Engel

Hannibal Fire Department WEBSITE.
Working Fire Training Systems WEBSITE.

Thanks to University of Missouri – Fire Rescue Training Institute