 “Hero”
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A SKIER who fell into a crevasse was saved from plummeting 700ft to his death by his mobile phone. David Fitzherbert got wedged between two rocks due to the ½inch-wide Blackberry in his breast pocket. Incredibly, the device still worked after keeping him stuck for TWO HOURS until he was rescued.
David, 52, was skiing off-piste down a glacier in the Matterhorn and Monterosa peaks in Switzerland when the snow gave way. The finance worker said: “The snow gave way beneath me and I fell down a very deep crevasse.
“After 70 feet it narrowed and I became stuck like a cork in a bottle between the walls. “Fortunately the extra inches of the Blackberry were enough to block the fall.” David broke his jaw, smashed his teeth, cracked a bone in his chest and nearly tore his nose off. His mountain guide made a distress call, and a mountain rescue team came to dig him out.
Married David, of Kensington, West London, said: “I was stuck so fast they had to get a drill to dig away at the ice around me. I was eventually winched out by the helicopter rescue team.” He was flown to hospital suffering extreme hypothermia and concussion in Swiss capital Bern, where surgeons reattached his nose. David spent ten days in hospital – using the Blackberry to call his wife in the UK. He said: “It was still working well enough for me to tell her I was alive. I couldn’t believe it.” On his return to the UK David wrote to Vodafone, who supplied the Blackberry, to thank them.
I just knew that someday, if I looked hard enough, I would find a positive story about a cell phone.
The bad news is he now has breast cancer.
Had this been an iPhone 3G S the gyroscope inside it would have spun and thus generate an antigravitational field and thus reduce the gravitational pull of the earth.
Of course, you have to pay AT&T an $80 monthly fee for a 2 second, once a year use of this built in feature.
Sure, a Blackberry will save you, but an iPhone 3GS would also keep you warm.
http://tinyurl.com/nkewr2
I wear Blackberrys on my knees when I’m gardening.
I just knew that someday, if I looked hard enough, I would find a positive story about a cell phone.
Congratulations. You found one … probably the only one.
#5 – JimR,
LOL!
Does that work with them as they’re sold or do you buy special padded cases for them?
good thing he wasn’t using it when he wen’t skiing; The heat would have melted the ice.
#6, MScott, They’re perfect out of the box! The buttons are cushy and the casing blocks sharp pebbles. 🙂
How do you know the guy wasn’t a serial killer and had he fallen to his death, and lives would have been saved? Seems to me like the cell phone could possibly be a bad actor here.
Well, okay. But if he’d been carrying a 3G iPhone it would have kept him toasty warm, too.
#3 You have it wrong. Not only would a 3GS made him fall even faster as its more slippery, even if it did wedge him the extreme heat would have melted the ice causing him to fall the rest of the way.
See folks, apple really IS trying to kill people.
Definition of “suicidal act”: Skiing on a glacier.
If you don’t want to die don’t do that. The best advice is to stay off the things or if you must use several people ten or so feet apart and roped together so if one person falls in crevasse the others can pull them out.
This guy is a prime candidate for a Darwin award.
Then it’s a good thing the skier didn’t take the blackberry out of his pocket to tweet his experience, while jammed inside the ice, eh?
What a ring endorsement for Blackberry’s. As an expensive wedge or doorstop, it’s a lifesaver. Wouldn’t a large pouch of Beef Jerky has done the same thing? Or a canteen? This sounds like it may be a madeup endorsement, for commercial purposes.
i call bs on this story… a cell phone working in remote mountains in a creavasse and after a 70+ foot fall.. (shouldnt the measurement be given in meters??) hhhmmm