Rescuers had grave concerns for an elderly fisherman stranded at night in the cold near a South Island river, until they called in a farmer with local knowledge who was able to locate the man in the dark.<\/p>\n
The lost 87-year-old man rang emergency services for help about 8:15pm on Thursday, after becoming disoriented following a fishing trip near Lake Tekapo, at the Cass River mouth, police said.<\/p>\n
Search and Rescue teams were swung into action, and police “remained on the phone with the 87-year-old, encouraging him to keep himself moving to stay warm, and provided reassurance while efforts were under way to locate him,” they said.<\/p>\n
But, they were worried the response would not reach the lost man and his dog in time: “While [he] was dressed warmly, Police were concerned he was not equipped to spend the night outdoors in the cold conditions”.<\/p>\n
So, looking for a faster way to get help to him, police made a call to a nearby farm manager, Grant Murray, who knows the area well.<\/p>\n
Murray agreed to help. And “after 35 minutes on the phone, the lost man was successfully located by Mr Murray”.<\/p>\n
The elderly man and his dog were taken home to warm up and rest.<\/p>\n
The rescue showed the value of local knowledge, and strong community relationships, police said.<\/p>\n
“Canterbury Police would like to thank everyone who was involved in the search … especially … Mr Murray, whose local knowledge proved invaluable in helping bring the search to a successful conclusion.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rescuers had grave concerns for an elderly fisherman stranded at night in the cold near a South Island…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-541652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}